Iain Betterton

Iain Betterton

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first registered 03.09.08

last online 987 days ago

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The Bu$ine$$ of Love

Iain Betterton

This is a play... A 21st century tragedy, in the old style



A twenty-first century offering,

Awaits your impeccable scrutiny;

Presented in contemporary garb,

To ward off a sacking, or mutiny,

That may wince at an old-fashioned story,

Here delivered with traditional tongue –

Which by being so deliberate and

Measured, may strike to the heart of the sun.

Soon you will meet all the players, learn their

Timeless obsessions and vices, wonder

At motives, leanings, emotions and all

Of those internal wranglings of conscience,

So part of the human condition. Bluff,

And gallivanting, posturing and love,

Pick any time to pin strange Nature down

For inspection, you’ll see, this butterfly’s

Wing’s a spectrum of things universal.

Consider then, the lure of pounds and pence,

The consolation of love’s happiness,

An oasis in the desert of man’s

Ambition. Tantalising. Visible.

Yet so intangible, risible, and

In the lacking thereof, most terrible.



 

The Write Stuff

Iain Betterton

A sitcom about a hapless writer, his long-suffering partner, and their northern lodger


Episode one: James is unemployed, but convinced he is a writer in the making. His lodger Dan, an old University mate, is a builder with little sympathy for his jobless friend, and enlists his help in shifting some traffic cones. James feels a calling to become a bus poet for London Transport but what do you do when an old lady insults you with a vicious limerick and calls you a prick on the 176 to Oxford Circus?


Episode two: James gets an interview as editorial assistant at Baked Bread Monthly, but fails to rise to the challenge. Luckily, he's managed to self-print his own kid's adventure book: Danny and the Magic Cheeseburger, and now someone from the New York Paramount wants to write a review. But isn't that a hotel?

 

A Confession in Hieroglyphics

Iain Betterton

I bear the physical scars of my emotional treachery. They give me away like a secret language; a confession in hieroglyphics.


It is more or less ten years ago to the day that I left as a young man in search of adventure abroad. A day like today, early in April, when the sun is as clear as the air is crisp, the land rejoicing in a recent wetting. An invigorating, hope-stuffed feeling pervades on days like these, charged, when the world has learnt once again to shed its dungeonesque beginnings, and offers us instead, illuminations. I thought the world held endless possibility.... Before long I had made a series of conscious decisions which were to affect my life in a way I could never have predicted. The calendar hanging from the back of the door reminds me of two crucial despondencies; the impossibility of leisure, and the magnitude of time when it is lived at the level of seconds. A bookshelf is crammed to the hilt with rejected books, ragged and discarded with troubled spines. A collection of ghost stories, a journal of sea voyages, the Pilgrim’s Progress, a dictionary of biology. They gather dust and, wedged together, form an impenetrable stack of misery, forgotten words left, irreligiously, with a forgotten man.

 

Djanni in Arlin

Iain Betterton

The shadows have penetrated Arlin! Can Djanni possibly help defend the last safe place in Meycass, and find her missing uncle Hunston...


12-year-old Djanni is rescued from her home village of Swarfel during a war ravaging the surface of her world, Meycass. She is taken to an underground refuge called Arlin, run by the enigmatic Melvic. Arlin is an unusual, exciting place. It runs on ENIM technology (environment imaging) and exists only because the inhabitants imagine that it does, (the flag fluttering over the city does so because people want it to, not because there’s any breeze!)

Djanni learns that an evil force, nurtured by the Kamora family, is the reason for darkening skies above ground. With other newlings gathered at Arlin, all of whom share her sense of Shadow-Sight, Djanni learns to harness the power of her imagination to save Arlin from attack, find her beloved uncle Hunston, and then must choose between them…

 

Lonely Bodies

Iain Betterton

A collection of short stories around the central theme of the individual set adrift from their environment, about inner struggle and isolation


A woman with a desire for physical interaction, but a distaste for companionship. Sod the Lonely Hearts, it's Lonely Bodies more like! Her Bogey gives her sweet satisfaction until the charm dissipates, and her bit of fun disappears. But there's nothing like a woman scorned... Vern is a lighthouse keeper whose geographical isolation conjures a world of strange fantasies, centred on the flight of a Heron, a spiritual messenger. The destruction of his inner world by the brutal force of the world outside causes a catastrophic implosion which further pulls Vern into solitude and retreat... Aselom sits cocooned in a meditative state, attuned to his environment, waiting for an answer to manifest itself to the problem of a treacherous son. Guided by the voices of the elders, and the actions of a stranger and his dying horse, his vigil for ultimate guidance offers up a clear path.. Tommy struggles against the feelings crowding in on him like the New York skyline itself. Issues of class and greed rear their ugly heads to thwart his success, and leave him feeling like a fish out of water... Steve pays the ultimate price for the revelation he discovers through a telescope....

 

Bobby's Double

Iain Betterton

A compelling thriller about deception and ultimate revenge. Danny is mister average who nearly loses everything to scheming criminals just because of how he looks...


Danny is tired of his job and his relationship with Jenn is on the rocks. A chance meeting leads him into a world of money, parties and holidays with a new set of high-flying friends, and a new girl Lolita, all of whom soon disappear leaving his life in pieces. Danny discovers a series of cover-ups, false identities and lies blocking the path to the truth and wonders why a group of people would interfere so callously in his personal life... Everything changes when Danny spies a news story in the papers linking a gangland murder to his ex-pals, and all gradually becomes clear. The key to the job was a man called Bobby Blezard, who bears an uncanny resemblance to Danny.. he makes the decision to settle his score away from the law. They have seriously underestimated him if they thought he would just keep quiet. Danny is ready to shut the operation up for good, and with the unlikely help of Blezard himself, aims to bring this heartless and brutal outfit to its knees. Lolita enlists the help of Jenn, who is at last convinced that Danny was set-up, to pull off the double-bluff of the century…

 

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After one year on the site and over 700 reviews, I have accepted many....

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Hello, I am not an author myself and am here purely as a fan of lite....

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