GLYPH – Intro

I started writing this as part of NaNoWriMo. I missed a few days because of travel and illness and became so far behind the daily requirement that I basically gave up on hitting 50,000 by the end of November. What I have done is about 11k words and I’ve hit a bit of a wall in the plot.

Here’s is the opening paragraph. Like all good NaNoWriMo projects, it’s rough, full of spelling mistakes and could do with some serious editing. I think I put part of this up here to (a) amuse me and (b) to fill out the time where posts have been lacking. It may also start some thoughts about what on Earth I do with it.

Without further ado – GLYPH: Chapter One

Ben Talisman’s 120th birthday was about a month away and the feeling coming from deep within his bones told him that retirement was rapidly approaching. He had been working at the museum for ninety years, serving as Head Curator for the past forty. Today would be the 50th budget meeting at Civic Centre he was summoned to. Every year, he walked alone with his craggy face set in a graven stare. He used this time to go over his strategy. It took an incredible amount of planning and research to make sure the museum wasn’t shut down or ransacked for financial reasons. The first few meeting, Talisman had relied upon presenting all the good work and all the beneficial effects the museum had. After one close call where the museum was saved from closure within the last forty-eight hours, Talisman took to gaining advantages from researching whoever was the current Portfolio Direktor.

The strategy had worked so far. The problem was no reason or excuse could be used twice. The trick was to stun the bureaucratic system whilst getting the desired result from whoever had the authority to sign off on the budget. This meant these meetings had become increasingly bizarre. One year, Talisman had planted false evidence in the Direktor’s house to suggest that his wife was a keen patron of the museum. He did this when he found out that the Direktor’s brave face hid a deep neurosis over his wife’s death six years previously. Another time, Talisman had found the Direktor was addicted to a rare hallucinogenic made from the sweat glands of poisoned West African Children, so he conducted the entire meeting dressed as a reptilian archangel sent by a Pulsar God from the other side of the Cosmos.