Over the years, lots. In the IT game I wrote manuals for my employers' systems, and occasionally for trade magazines, when those existed. At university I was one of a number of contributors to a scurrilous irregular publication that, essentially, mocked everybody (including ourselves, to disguise our involvement. Nobody believed for a second that we were not the culprits). Occasionally a muse will whack me round the head and say "Get this down on paper, quick!", whereupon I deliver a few hundred or thousand words of internally-consistent nonsense from nowhere. It usually goes to an unsuspecting correspondent. Sometimes they appreciate it.
When/if I can get ENGRAVITATION out of the way, there is a sort-of sequel started, featuring some of the same characters. This time the setting is international (UK, Israel, maybe USA),
present day or tomorrow. Its
McGuffin is technological, and scientifically feasible. It will probably have spies and/or terrorists, who will be a
pain to write, but like ENGRAVITATION, it will be uplifting, not dismal. Its working title is Without The Moon (hooray, no divisive capitals). You’ll love
it.
Aside from all that, my character Daniel Crowland has his own blog, The Point, where I let him write anything he wants to. To date that means mostly tedious tales about IT projects (where does he get that from?). I think he can do better, so I'm encouraging him to put some of his poems in there instead. Keep an eye out for him.
Thursday, 14 August 2014
What does "engravitation" mean? Why the capitals?
I refer you Humpty Dumpty's opinion, quoted on the preamble page (see here). The meaning intended by the character who uses it is obvious when the word appears in the story. This occurs quite late in the book, and if it's all you've been waiting for you will be disappointed. You have been warned.
When a secondary meaning made itself known to me some time after I wrote that scene, I knew immediately that I had found my title. I added a line to the book to suggest that at least one character has spotted this secondary meaning, but it works well enough without. The warning above applies here too.
I nearly always write it in all-capitals because I'm talking about the book, and to me, it doesn't look right any other way. Where it appears in the book, of course, it's all lower-case just as in the question posed above. If my use of all-caps offends your sense of typography, I completely understand and sympathise, but I'm not changing it. Blame marketing (or Marketing).
When a secondary meaning made itself known to me some time after I wrote that scene, I knew immediately that I had found my title. I added a line to the book to suggest that at least one character has spotted this secondary meaning, but it works well enough without. The warning above applies here too.
I nearly always write it in all-capitals because I'm talking about the book, and to me, it doesn't look right any other way. Where it appears in the book, of course, it's all lower-case just as in the question posed above. If my use of all-caps offends your sense of typography, I completely understand and sympathise, but I'm not changing it. Blame marketing (or Marketing).
Is it supposed to be funny?
I was shocked recently to notice a whole set of shelves in a bookshop devoted to "Tragic Life Stories." This is not one of those. Conversely, it's not jokey in the relentless facetious way of much that I see filed under "Humour." The tone is generally light: one reader of an early draft called it "a pleasant easy read", which is just about what I was aiming for.
Whether you find it humorous or funny (not the same thing) will depend on your definition of humour (or fun). Characters make jokes to or about one another that you may find funny, although the characters on the receiving end may not. Situations occur that are humorous in part, although the humour may be alloyed with loss, thwarted design or jeopardy. If you can hear the humour in the songs of Richard Thompson or Leonard Cohen, you should appreciate the humour in ENGRAVITATION. Alternatively, if you like the way the blurb alludes to "sex and drums and rock and holes", you will probably like the contents of the book too.
[Warning: I wrote the blurb when the book was about three-quarters complete. I'd been immersed in writing one of the less humorous sections, and needed a different viewpoint to lift myself out of the mood it engendered. That worked; and I was pleasantly amazed at how different the story could look from another angle.
Like all blurbs, this one takes a little liberty, so if you read "SEX and drums and rock and holes", you've got the emphasis wrong. But thank you in advance for buying the book.]
Whether you find it humorous or funny (not the same thing) will depend on your definition of humour (or fun). Characters make jokes to or about one another that you may find funny, although the characters on the receiving end may not. Situations occur that are humorous in part, although the humour may be alloyed with loss, thwarted design or jeopardy. If you can hear the humour in the songs of Richard Thompson or Leonard Cohen, you should appreciate the humour in ENGRAVITATION. Alternatively, if you like the way the blurb alludes to "sex and drums and rock and holes", you will probably like the contents of the book too.
[Warning: I wrote the blurb when the book was about three-quarters complete. I'd been immersed in writing one of the less humorous sections, and needed a different viewpoint to lift myself out of the mood it engendered. That worked; and I was pleasantly amazed at how different the story could look from another angle.
Like all blurbs, this one takes a little liberty, so if you read "SEX and drums and rock and holes", you've got the emphasis wrong. But thank you in advance for buying the book.]
Is ENGRAVITATION autobiography?
No. There are parallels with my life and experience, in the sense that I've been a 16- or 17-year old boy, and I've been paid to perform music in public, and I've spent enough time in Liverpool and other places he knows that the geography and local colour are reasonably accurate. However, Our Hero is significantly older than me, and most of what happens to him is necessarily my invention. Some of it, as far as I know, is impossible.
If you need a prior example of something like this genre, I recommend Jack Trevor Story's Hitler Needs You, which was so long out of print that I thought I'd never see it again. However, it was republished in the 21st century (see here) and is even available as an e-book (although the Kindle app on my phone says it's not. Never trust a machine).
If you need a prior example of something like this genre, I recommend Jack Trevor Story's Hitler Needs You, which was so long out of print that I thought I'd never see it again. However, it was republished in the 21st century (see here) and is even available as an e-book (although the Kindle app on my phone says it's not. Never trust a machine).
Wednesday, 13 August 2014
The structure of ENGRAVITATION
A mostly serial narrative, interleaved with fragments of the chronologically penultimate chapter. I lifted the "penultimate first" idea from (among others) Roger Zelazny's Lord Of Light, in which the protagonist is introduced at a high point of the action and then "remembers" in even-sized chapters the earlier events that brought him to this pass, before continuing to the final conclusion and a little bit of postscript that will make you cry. If you read LOL in strict chronological order, it doesn't work half so well.
Splitting a whole chapter into fragments no more than a page long allows me to bring in the McGuffin of which my own protagonist is unaware for much of the narrative. For most of this chapter, he is in hospital, drifting in and out of sleep, doing not very much except dream. You've been there too.
ENGRAVITATION has its own postscript, which in a book with a musical background I choose to call Encore. This encore is quite long, and if you stay to the end you may miss your last bus home. Feel free to cry if you want.
Splitting a whole chapter into fragments no more than a page long allows me to bring in the McGuffin of which my own protagonist is unaware for much of the narrative. For most of this chapter, he is in hospital, drifting in and out of sleep, doing not very much except dream. You've been there too.
ENGRAVITATION has its own postscript, which in a book with a musical background I choose to call Encore. This encore is quite long, and if you stay to the end you may miss your last bus home. Feel free to cry if you want.
The world of ENGRAVITATION
The setting is Liverpool (England, UK), in the 1950s. Post-war reconstruction is a fact of life in the background; it seems to have been going on forever. The city is often shrouded in a smog that Dickens would recognise: "I saw stars occasionally, but never constellations." Childhood is still, potentially, a time of innocence. If teenagers have been invented in America, they have not yet crossed the Atlantic; the few real-live Americans around are on airbases, tapping their feet to keep warm in a cold war. Grown-ups, in charge of the world, can display a casual racism, and other attitudes, that would be considered inflammatory today. Travel, beyond the mile or two to school or work, is a rare luxury. Private transport is far from the norm; public transport is slow and unreliable, and timetables are unfathomable (some things never change).
To anyone who lived through it, most memories of that time are in fuzzy black-and-white. This book is about a few splashes of colour.
To anyone who lived through it, most memories of that time are in fuzzy black-and-white. This book is about a few splashes of colour.
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