AUTHOR'S NOTE: What have I done!?!?!!

Let me just say this outright: I sit here on the brink of failure... at least so far as Necropolis goes.

I know I've posted several times before in tones so very nearly the same as I am expressing here and in spite of it, nothing of much substance has followed, or at least when it has, it hasn't sustained.

But, once again, here are the bullet points:

- I haven't given up.

- I do know the long arc of this narrative.  I know the ultimate end (way off in the distance at the end of Book III) as well as the end of the current book.  I know the important benchmarks along the way.  There are things that I am so excited to get around to writing, once their time comes. But there is a lot of detail to fill in and discover.

- I have the best intentions to finish.

- I have a few bits in the bank ready to go... though I can't explain why I haven't posted them yet.

Mostly what this all comes down to is that I have underestimated just how much of my time was going to be consumed by being a father.  Cliche.  I know.  And being a Dad is not the only thing that has a higher priority in my life than Necropolis.  

Necropolis isn't even the second in line on my WRITING priority list.  But for a dozen weeks or so at least, that is about to change. I've signed up for a course. "Monetizing Your Blog" offered by my friend Rebecca Coleman. Rebecca is pretty high on my list of favourite people I know.  And not just because she did a spectacular job as the publicist for my feature film Beast of Bottomless Lake, although that certainly was an important stage in our friendship.

Anyhow, it is a skill I want to learn more about and with several blogs on the go for various purposes, it is probably worth my time to fill in some gaps in my knowledge.  My biggest issue, coming out of the gate is that I don't really think any of my blogs are ideal candidates for monetizing.  Necropolis, Great Scenes from Fake Movies  and a third one which I have yet to officially launch (tentatively titled Galileo) as I am still in the research stage of, are all essentially creative writing.  Best Picture is not so much a blog as a video series, and has been even more neglected than Necropolis since the tiniest roommate arrived - not to mention that each post takes over two weeks to create when things are going well.  (For the record there is fresh footage in the can for a new episode, I just have to find the time to edit it.)  Confessions of an Asshole Skeptic really only gets attention when I have something to say in the world of science advocacy - and have time to say it.  Not to mention that it is a niche that is extremely well filled by people better qualified than me - including a client of mine, so monetizing it would be a fools game.  The Truth and the Signal is pretty much random, personal, entirely subject to whim and by that definition brand-less, so what would be the point?  And I haven't even mentioned any of the other blogs that have effectively, if not actually reached end of life - most notably the blog for the film mentioned above.

I've only mentioned the blogs of course.  I also have some client work to attend to as well as several screenplays on the assembly line.  One screenplay is in the hands of folks I want to get money from - getting it to that point was a big chunk of effort.  A second one is in re-drafts and has been the toughest and most promising thing I've ever written - but there is a long way to go on that one.  And beyond that there are no less than three others that I intend to set-upon as soon as I can shoehorn the time into my schedule.

The scary thing is I actually get no less than a dozen hours each week to focus on this stuff outside of my care-giving time and it isn't enough.  But don't catch me complaining.

Anyhow... I admit I wish Galileo was ready to be the piece I would focus on in my monetizing course, but starting with something that has a back-catalogue is clearly the way to go.  So Necropolis it is.  And who knows, maybe these few months of refocusing on it will be the impetus to finish that was missing?  But I do admit, I am feeling a bit "what have I committed myself to now?" about this.  I have to do at least one post a week and I really don't want to have to resort to more Author's Notes bemoaning the state of the project.  Of course there was a time when I kept up a pace of 2-3 posts a week - back when I wasn't a primary care-giver.  I can do this.  I can do this.

- Kennedy

AUTHOR'S NOTE: This is harder than it looks

     I was doing so well!
     I can't promise that I'm going to do much better than I am now for a while, but rest assured, this is not over.
    
     Perhaps I should loan this a bit more context...
     So, blah, blah, still learning how to be an effective part-time stay at home Dad... but I do think that in the past few weeks I've truly started to find my feet, so to speak.  Still amazed at the sheer amount of time my regular pay-cheque job is sucking out of my life between hours worked and commuting time.  Oh my god, the commuting time!  But I've managed to unload one shift at the regularish job and replaced it with a one-day-a-week video-editing contract which begins to bleed some flexibility, sanity and breathing space into my schedule.  (And as I can do it from home, the commute is about 18 paces.)
     So there is hope.  I am gettting writing done slowly but surely.  I've actually had a chapter finished for over a week now (will be posting it after this note), it has simply been difficult to find a time to get around to posting it.  My various other creative projects (most of which align more directly with what I consider to be my vocation) all get priority when I have windows of time to work.  The number of opportunities I have to dedicate to Necropolis has severely diminished. 
     But last week Jodie kicked me in the pants... figuratively.  With all the hammering my schedule has taken in the past six months or so, the one thing I've made a point of not allowing to slip is my time for her and I.  For the most part that has meant that we spent some time virtually every evening watching the shows we love the most.  Really, that's just a few TV shows.  Dexter, and Being Erica* are the perennial favourites, with Big Bang Theory and How I Met Your Mother bering close seconds.  We've given up on nearly everything we've started watching new this season.  Up All Night (which could not possibly be aimed more directly at us as a demographic) and Pan-Am are both hanging on by their ragged nails to our viewing schedule.  ....I am getting WAY off topic.
     Anyhow...  Jodie said last week that really we should be able to do all our TV watching in two nights, still have one night a week for movie night, one night for whatever comes up - including, god forbid, going out and having a life - and then I could use a few hours three nights a week for working on my myriad projects.
     And that is where I am at now.  This is my third night for working on projects.  I used the first two for reviewing footage for a documentary I am working on (more details on that when it becomes relevant) and tonight I am first doing Necropolis catch-up, then getting my bearings on at least one of the screenplays I've got mouldering in my brain.

     My intention is that I'll still be able to give at least half of one night a week to Necropolis, maybe more.  Which should mean that I can get a few posts a month out.  That is nowhere near the pace I need to keep up if I am ever going to finish this tale before I'm collecting my pension (I am exaggerating,) but at least I'll be moving forward.... and maybe I can actually find a way to make better time than that.

     Only time will tell.

*For non-Canadians, I highly recommend that you go out of your way to see this show.  It is frikking awesome.  Yeah it kind of sounds a little girly and it took a bit of work to get me to try it on for size, but it only took one episode once I tried it.  I'm not going to spoil it at all.  Just see it.  The show is really easy to see in Canada as it's a CBC created show, but it has done really well in other markets, so it ought not be that hard to track down.  There are both British and American versions in the making (which, frankly is a bit insulting), but you ought to be able to find the real deal easy enough, and it is in the same language for both Brits and Yanks.  Oh and... the lead is played by a girl I went to theatre school with... though I was in fourth year when she was in first year and I admit I don't actually remember her from then - but she is fantastic.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: An explanation of the up-coming non-linearity of chapter numbers

I have a conundrum.

At this point, I am well ahead in my writing from the latest posts, and I have come across a problem that I'm not sure how to deal with.

So, for the first time in this project, I am turning to you, the readers, for direct and specific feedback.

The situation is that Chapter Two, as written, doesn't chronologically fit before Chapter's Three and Four, but in terms of pacing and tone I want it to be Chapter Two.

The simplest solution is to simply quit intellectualizing it and put it where it chronologically goes. The next easiest alternative is to put it where I think it dynamically belongs as Chapter Two and hope no one notices that the time-line is wonky.

Options beyond that become more complex - I could number it as Chapter Two but place it as Chapter Four (or vice versa) and provide an explanation (which is technically what I am currently doing, just without the experimental intention of figuring out what is best); or I could do some serious re-writing... which may be the best solution in the end, though I don't have a simple fix for making the timeline work with Chapter Two as Chapter Two in the proper place of Chapter Two... See... it's very confuzzling.

So where it currently stands is that in Part Two Chapter Three follows Chapter One; Chapter Four follows Three; Chapter Two follows Four; and Chapter Five follows Two, putting us back into numerical 'correctness.' This is proper chronological order.

What I ask of you, the reader, is to give me your feedback on this configuration. Read through to at least Chapter Five (though if you hold out to Chapter Seven, it wouldn't hurt as the chronological implications as the balance of narrative on each major character extends at least that far). I'll toss in a reminder once those chapters are published. At that point if you can leave some feedback in the comments as to whether you felt that configuration worked for you - and specifics as to how you felt it didn't - that would be greatly appreciated.

If at that point, it seems as though I have my head up my ass and that the narrative balance, pace and tone all work just fine then so much the better. I'll re-number the chapters and move on with impunity. If it seems as though there is some collective feeling that it doesn't quite work right, then I'll move on to phase two - and do some tests of the chapters in my original configuration.

As annoying as having a narrative issue to solve is, this is actually kind of exciting for me. This is the first real test of this model of publishing - you know, the one where YOU are the editor...

AUTHOR'S NOTE - A small change

Somehow it seems appropriate to me that there has been an up-tick in readership over the past week as I've come to the end of part one and move into part two.

Hello to you if you are new!  You won't actually be noticing the change really if you are new, so perhaps I should just keep my mouth shut!

Before I move into the change, I just want to take a moment to send out a thank you.  There are a small handful of you that have taken my "You are the Editor" premise to heart.  Thank you all, but I want to specifically single out a gentleman I went to high-school with, Andy Binning.  I have always thought of Andy as a smart and kind soul, and his input into Necropolis continues to reflect that image.  He has provided me we a lot of feedback.  I took almost all of his typographical input.  His more subjective input I have taken in pieces.  Sentences that he had trouble parsing being the primary example. He had some broader thoughts which have yet to be evidenced in the book, but many of them are still banging away in my head, influencing me in subtle ways.  Thanks to you, Andy.  Thanks to everyone who has pointed out any errors.  And thanks to everyone - it is still a fairly small number - who are reading along.

Now... what is changing?

Well it's pretty minor, actually.  You can expect installments to come a little further apart for a few months.
There!  That's it!

You may know this already as many of you are friends and acquaintances.  I am a film-maker.  I've spent most of the last five years working on my first feature film.  We shot it in the summer of 2007; we screened it for cast and crew in January of 2010; that summer we had some cool experiences winning a few awards at a number of festivals (which technically is still going on - this very weekend it is screening in Tel Aviv!); and then everything came to a crashing halt.  I won't bore you with a break down of our breakdown, but it went on for months - just sitting in the doldrums between festival release and distribution.

Then, one day back in late February we got an email from our sales agent.  Super Channel wanted our film - we had five weeks to get it to them.  No problem, our film was done, right?  Well, no.  I'm skipping a lot here, but suffice to say that there was a mountain of legal work that needed to be done to satisfy the insurance company that was providing our E&O (Errors and Omissions) insurance.  If we weren't first timers on a very limited budget there could have been a lot we could have done to simplify the process and avoid hassles - ones we had basically created with our own ignorance.  It was a mind-boggling recursive process that was nothing less than Kafkaesque.  Indeed, on St. Patrick's Day morning I didn't want to face the day (for the first time in my life) as I was virtually certain we were done and that the film would never see the light of day.  Remarkably, by that afternoon the clouds had cleared and we equally virtually certain that we would see our film on television.  Long story short, there was a week or so of intense (but not so challenging) technical stuff to work out and we were done.  On April 6th of this year I officially became a broadcast film-maker.  If you are in Canada you can see the film on Super Channel - their license continues 'til October of 2012, so in theory you can see it until then.  We are currently in pretty high rotation.

Following all of this, we have jumped into DVD preparations - not two days ago I was in Victoria recording a very cool audio commentary with our star, David Nykl; our science advisor, Stan Orchard; and the editor of Junior Skeptic Magazine, Daniel Loxton.  We are also working on a small theatrical tour of the film.  In other words, I am STILL very busy.

Before the proverbial shit hit the fan I was well ahead on Necropolis.  I had chapters and chapters "in the bank" ready to post.  Well, that buffer is getting eaten up at a voracious pace, and I don't see where I'm going to have enough time to keep ahead if I don't space out installments a bit.  Most installments have been (not counting various authors notes and other communications) four days apart up until now.  From now until at least the end of June I am going to extend that by 50% to six days.  The way I see it, either I do that or I risk having a BIG window of no posts when I "catch up" to my current writing and have no time to build upon what already exists.

Additionally, I think having a buffer of written but yet to be released material actually improves the writing.  It gives me more opportunity to go back and make changes which don't confuse the reader - and thus far it seems that the things I most need to change are those that fall into the buffer of "written but yet to be released material."

So, I believe that this is for the best.  I will endeavour to pick up the pace again as soon as possible.  I am still writting new material, I just don't get to write as much as regularly as I would like right now.

Meantime, if you get a chance, either check out The Beast of Bottomless Lake on Super Channel, or pre-order a DVD!

AUTHOR'S NOTE: My Pledge to You

Before we move into Part Two, I have a few promises to make...


No sparkly vampires.


No werewolves, psychics, witches, or demons. This is about vampires, not vampires and their super-natural buddies.


While there will be love, there won't be any sap. (Sorry, if that's the kind of vampire novel you like - this defiantly isn't it.)


No magic. Sort of... Obviously vampires aren't science, but in my world there is no magic, there is only science. Also, while I am not a dualist, the details of this tale necessitate the existence of a soul or at least the possibility of one - more on that within later chapters. In any case everything in this world should adhere to a consistent internal logic that doesn't rely heavily on magic.


Wherever possible I will evade cliches of the genre. There will of course be exceptions. There are tropes of the genre which simply have to be present or this wouldn't be recognizable as a vampire tale.


And while we're on the subject of tropes... any writer who delves into this genre has to answer a number of questions for themselves, most of which can be summed up with the larger question "which of the accepted canon of vampire qualities are relevant in this world?" By now I have answered most of these questions for myself. I'm not going to get into the details here as it would involve some spoiling, but over the course of the three books I will acknowledge virtually any and all of the accepted options in one fashion or another. Either they are functional parts of my vampire universe; they are myths that have developed from a related functional part of my universe; or they are something that make my vampires laugh in disdane at... sparkly vampires, I am looking at you.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Why another book of THIS genre?

I have asked myself the same question.  And as it turns out the answer is quite simple.

Now that I've finally gotten to the first big reveal of the book - that much of what the story revolves around is the idea that vampires walk among us - I can talk about the inevitable sentiment; "Why write another damned vampire book when there's clearly a glut of them out there?"

When I initially began imagining this story I wrestled with the same thought. But that was quite a few years ago. Back then Anne Rice was still selling like cheese in Wisconsin, I knew fringy people who played Vampire the Masquerade, and people were just beginning to notice the voice of Joss Whedon.

Somewhere in there a friend who I mentioned the book to quipped "A vampire story? Yeah - like there aren't already enough of those around!" I'm a little ashamed to admit that that comment alone delayed any serious work I might have put into this series by years.

But as time wore on the story wouldn't go away and kept growing in my imagination. It was clearly something my subconscious wasn't going to let go of. So I started thinking about it more actively. In the process of doing so I had to address that bugbear - Why another vampire novel - in terms that extended past "it's the story I seem hellbent upon writing." I needed to address the glut.

By now the ongoing tale of Buffy and her myriad compadres only exists in comic book form, I no longer know anyone who plays The Masquerade (though apparently it persists), and Anne Rice can't make up her mind as to what brand of crazy she is. Yet the vampire genre is not only alive, but bigger than ever. Without even opening a search engine I can name Blood Ties (extinct), True Blood (boring after season one), Vampire Diaries (which sounds completely unlike anything I'd be interested in) and of course the mighty (and mightily appalling) Twilight movies. All of which are based on predecessing books.

The vampire genre is alive and well. It comes in waves - and I think we are currently peaking and will soon be in the trough, but it never goes away entirely.

I could try to justify my past evasion from writing this story by declaring that there was a demonstrable wave of popularity in effect back then and that I was putting it off so as to hit the swell of the next wave. (That would be more than just a little bit of retrodicting the circumstances, but bear with me.) If you accept that premise, it is clear that I failed. I got back on board far too late to truly capitalize. The essential lesson being that trying to predict when the next wave will hit, or how big it will be or how long it will last is simply foolish.

It keeps coming back to the same thing. This is the book I am compelled to write, and I am ready to write it now, so I shall. I'm not going to bother myself with the literary trends of the day. I will write better if I am simply following my creative drive than if I try to cynically pursue any trend. If it was really about following a trend I should have started writing this much sooner - by a year and a half or more.

I'll be following this author's note up shortly with another wherein I'll make a few promises to you, the reader, as to what I intend this tale to be and how that distinguishes it from all else that is out there.

AUTHOR'S NOTE - You are the editor

Okay, that's three chapters down and we are at the end of the year.


I hope that Santa was good to you - or who ever or what ever is appropriate to you for this season.


Here I am at my last planned author's note for the forseable future. No doubt there will be others and I will be doing an insight post following the next chapter, but right now I don't see a pressing need for any new author's notes after this one.


I rather think that the title of this post kind of sums up the philosophy I intend to cover herein, but allow me to go over it in greater detail.


I have no proper editor. I am a one-man-show over here. But I am, like all of us, fallible. There are a dozen or more obvious ways I could make mistakes - even if I'm being careful - as I put this trilogy together. And there must be gadjillion additional ways I could screw up with increasingly unlikely (though non-zero) chances of occurence.


This is where you come in.


If only I had the legions of fans that Star Trek garnered which eagerly dove in and dissected all the contradictions and errors in their ever-increasing millieu. They of course didn't have my advantage of being able to go back and correct their errors, having committed them all to permanence on celluloid. I however have much more ability to adjust. I will be relying on my readers to help me ferret out the most egregious mistakes, and with three chapters in the bag, it's time to open those doors and start that process.


Copy Editing


Inevitably some of it will come down to simple copy-editing. I do run a spell-check before I publish chapters, but that's hardly fool proof. Even if I did have perfect spelling and an equal grammar knowledge base I would miss things due to familiarity. There will be times when things are deliberately wrong - especially, but not limited to dialogue. (But don't let that possibility hold you back.) I welcome and encourage all input on these things. Simply point out the error in the comments of the appropriate post and I shall deal with it.


I am not in the habit of deleting comments on any of my past blogs (unless they are spam) even if they are unfairly negative. I can imagine a future where I would want to clean up the comments on some posts simply because of a long string of people pointing out a deliberate grammatical error, or if there are comments about spelling mistakes that I have long since corrected (like anyone would really want to waste their time reading posts about errors that no longer exist!) So, for now... if you have a spelling or grammar correction to pass on please put it in a separate comment from any other points you may want to make. Hopefully I can find a more elegant way of dealing with this in the future.


Contradictions


In an ideal world I would never write a word that conflicted with a single other thing I have to say. But that simply isn't a reality that I live in. If you happen to notice a place where I have contradicted something I've previously said or otherwise thrown conflicting data into the story, by all means point it out to me. There is a chance it will have been by design, but in many cases it will be an artifact of simply having too many details to keep track of and I'll find a new way of achieveing the same narrative goal.


The fact that I will at times have to go back and retrodict portions of the plot makes this even more likely, though it also allows me plenty of freedom to correct any errors that crop up in the process.


I suppose there is a chance I could decide that a detail is simply too small for me to be bothered with, but I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.


Logic, Reality & Science


I am a big fan of science and reason. But there is also a need to tell a good story and there are often parts of any tale where either a blind eye must be turned or a game of "what if" is being played. This tale has some big "what ifs" in it and I must embrace them in order to tell the story I am telling, but within that context I want to hang on to as much reality as possible. I can't be an expert in everything, so I will be interested and open to hearing any and all opinions as to how I can improve the realistic parts of my story. By now it should be clear that there are some elements that have virtually nothing to do with the world we actually live in (and there will be more to come). But even these I wish to make as plausible as possible with the science we currently understand. So I am always open to your feedback.


Character, Plot Arc & Tone


While I can't please everyone, and my number one goal is to please myself... errr... that sounds dirty...  Uh... I am interested in what other people like and hate and imagine the future will hold for the people in the world of Necropolis.


I don't see any of these types of suggestions as "errors" per se, but I am very open to your general feedback. By all means. If you think the plot should feature more Edmond and less Sylvette, or the other way around, or the same for any of the other characters yet to make an appearance - tell me! If you find that you lost interest after a particular event then let me know. That is the information that is most important to me. I am not going to overhaul my entire trilogy to please a loud minority, but it could positively influence things that I am less committed to in the narrative. As much as this is about me writing the story I want to write, it is pointless to write it if I am not writing a story someone else is interested in too.


Like everything else in this project, this is all subject to ammendment. But for now, I invite you to play by these rules.

AUTHOR'S NOTE - Mechanics

I expect that how this all works will be fairly intuitive and that no one should truly need to read this post in order to be able to get the most out of this blog and more importantly the novel which is at the core of it.

But in the off chance that someone needs some light shed upon some detail of my process, or should the whole thing become more complex than I could imagine, I am going to begin now and get some of the "rules" (so to speak) down.


Most of this is pretty self-evident I think, but...


Installments of the novel - all the most up to date versions - are labelled sequentially with the rather unimaginative, but easily organized title format of Book Number, Part Number, Chapter Number and Installment Number - Eg. "Book: The First - Part: Two - Chapter: 3 - Installment: iv."  (Note, I have no idea how long the third chapter of part two of the first book will be.)


Each installment will have a link at the end to the next installment in sequence... assuming I don't get lazy about it, but that would be really counter-productive.  Even so, the intallments will be posted in order and thus will appear in reverse-chronological order on the blog with the latest installment first.


On occassion I will have other things I want or need to talk about. Most of these will appear as Author's Notes like this one. I already have a total of four in mind and will be parcelling them out by the end of the year. Usually these will be practical things pertaining to the book/blog and in my mind will be things that most readers will want to at least peek at, if not read in full. They won't be required reading by any measure and some of them will arguably fit into different categories, but you can assume that if I have labelled it as an Author's Note that I think it is of above normal interest to the reader and beyond the narrative of the novel.


I also see a space to be filled for something I intend to label "insight." This will be a bit more of a peek behind the curtain. Indeed I already know what the first one will be. There is an element of chapter four which has had to change in my head since I first conceived the character that it revolves around. I think it's a potentially interesting look into how I've had to rethink a core element of the set-up. In the case of most novels the reader doesn't get the behind the scenes sort of thinking that goes into a book as it is being written. Perhaps this will be of interest to some of you, hence I'm including it, but I heartily endorse skipping these bits if you just want the story.


I suppose someday there might be a reason to label a post or posts as "news," but I suspect that if that ever happens it'll be a long way down the road.


As mentioned in my last author's note, I will also need a place to identify changes to past posts. I think this will probably occur on one separate consolidated page, but I have yet to commit to that and it's also likely that changes will appear in posts, or at least that I'll have posts that call attention to the consolidated page. I'll update on that matter as it becomes pertinent.


Related to that, I also suspect that there might be some interest in portions of the novel that have either been excised or radically changed - kind of the novel/blog version of "deleted and extended scenes."  For now I'm planning to label those as "Past Versions." They won't link into the narrative like proper chapters, but they will appear in the blog timeline in immediate proximity (presumably after) the chapters they relate to.


Like everything in this project this is all bound to change and I shall update this page accordingly at that time.

AUTHOR'S NOTE - The Living Document

It never previously occurred to me that like subsequent editions of the George Lucas epic, a novel could be constantly retrodicting it's narrative.


I was talking to my friend Paul Ingraham, who runs the very informative Save Yourself website about his process. Paul is a former Registered Massage Therapist who now writes about pain management (and other stuff, but mostly pain Management) and his writing practices are pretty interesting, but they are his and I'm not going to get into the minutae at his semi-proprietary expense. But I need to give credit where credit is due and it was directly through my discussions with him that I realized that a novel could be written as a living document. His site (which once upon a time began as a blog) is constantly being updated with the most up to date information and evidence in the world of pain management. And he does it non-linearly. He will go back a month, a year or ten and update an article - even completely change his stance if the evidence is compelling and revolutionary enough. Funny how when I type it out it doesn't seem anywhere near as fantastic to me as it was a revelation in the moment we discussed it.


As I have noted more prominently elsewhere, I am essentially a discovery writer. In the case of this massive work I have had a growing story developing detail in my head for years, but when it comes down to it I'm not the sort to write an outline, or do character-sketches or any of the myriad things that many authors do to map out their story before they begin. 


I simply begin. Page one, paragraph one, word one. I only know where my final destination is at the outset and that destination often changes as I go. 

CASE IN POINT: When I began this post it was going to be about a number of the mechanics of how I expect this process is going to work. But by now, it is obvious to me that it is only about the aspect of the living document.

This process works quite well for me on screenplays and other work, but when it comes to writing a narrative that could easily stretch to a quarter or even a half million words... suddenly it becomes extremely daunting.


The rewrite is any author's best tool. This is doubly the case for a discovery writer. I am very accustomed to the reality that as I forge forward I am going to come up with an idea that either needs to be seeded earlier in the narrative; or renders a previously written section moot; or that requires a significant overhaul of a previous section. Most times I save those changes for once I am done the first draft. Usually they are so bloody obvious that I can't help but remember them, but sometimes I leave myself a little reminder. As such my first drafts are often a fairly comical mess. Few people other than me ever see them.


And here's where the departure comes in...


I really just want to try to write this story and "get it out there." I'd already thought about publishing it as a blog - but knowing it was a massive tale and that I couldn't even begin fairly publishing it until I was done at least the first book of the trilogy (and possibly more) was an obvious impediment.


But then through my talks with Paul an idea arose. Why can't fiction work the same way as his website? Is there any good reason outside of some practical housekeeping applications? The short answer is "No. Of course not!"


And thus, here is how this works...


I am writing this novel linearly. From Book One, Part One, Chapter One through to Book Three, Part (probably) Three, Chapter Whoknows. But rather than doing as I normally would and not worrying about going back and re-jigging anything that needs to change due to new ideas as I normally would, for this project I am worrying. That may mean that there are parts of the book that will be rewritten multiple times.


It also makes you - the reader an accomplice in my process. How you take part in that is up to you. There will be a future author's note called something like "you are the editor" - I'll discuss how you fit in in more detail there.


At any time anyone who starts at the beginning and works through the numbered and linked chapters in sequence will always get the most up to date version of the book.


If you started reading the day of the first post (and no-one did because I decided to get at least the first full chapter up before I told anyone about it) you can either read each new posted chapter as they come and simply "suck it up" as far as the innumerable contradictions, logical flaws and other inexpicables are concerned, or you can occassionally check out my updates. As of this writing I haven't quite decided how the listing of updates is going to manifest, but be assured that I have a few options in mind. Indeed before too long this section on me not knowing how updates will be handled will be updated and will be no more.


Some updates (such as the one I predicted just above) will be made, will be permanent, will be given a token acknowledgement and the originals will never bee seen again. For the most part these will be copy-edit type changes. Typos, grammar and incidental reworking of text - that sort of thing. Some updates will disappear and I'll save a copy elsewhere 'cause I may suspect they'll return for some reason. Others, when I think there may be some interest, will simply be shifted to an alternate post (probably labelled "PAST VERSION" or something similar) so that people who came to it late can (if they like) see what once was and get a sense of the process that people who have been reading along from the start have had. The past versions will not link into the story, but they will appear around the same place as the most up to date versions in the chronological archive.


Oh yeah... the chronological archive... 


Part of my hesitancy to publish this as a blog is the nature of each new post coming up in the sequence as they are published. Of course there is no reason that they have to. Posts can be re-dated as necessary. I don't know why I was feeling precious about that previously, but I'm not any more. So let it be known that the dates of publication really don't mean much. Generally speaking you can assume that any given chapter was indeed posted originally on the date and time tagged to the post. Most "author's notes" and  "insight" will probably be the same - unless clearly indicated. I can't imagine why I'd change the date on anything labelled as "news." All the other stuff... "past versions" and any other post types that I haven't imagined I'll use yet - who knows, the dates could be wildly out of sequence with reality.

AUTHOR'S NOTE - A Humble Beginning

This is almost certainly not the only author's note.  It is merely the first.


I kind of wanted to spend a little space talking about how I have come to get started on this journey.


I warn you, this particular note is going to get kind of navel-gaze-y.  You may want to skip on ahead to the novel itself and come back to read this later if you decide you are genuinely interested in my personal back story.


HOW DID I GET 'HERE'?


I've been a writer for... it may have been the Carter administration. I'm Canadian, so really I should be saying "The Trudeau Parliament" except that the Trudeau Parliament lasted from before I was born 'til (with one brief, easily forgotten or at least ignored, hiccough) after I could legally drive a car.
I don't really recall too much about it, but I vaguely remember writing a "book" on a (gasp) standard non-electric typewriter when I was a child.  It may have been as many as a dozen pages long and probably three times that many chapters... each being little more than a few sentences. The story had something to do with a family of water droplets - I really don't remember much more than that, though I have a recollection of realizing that I was in a boring narrative rut where I'd begin a chapter with a sentence about what was going to happen in the chapter (IE. "In this chapter, the Drops are going to the faucet.") That would be followed by a sentence of the action actually happening ("One day the Drops went to the faucet.") Then if I was feeling particularly creative I might include some Sorkinesque dialogue, simultaneously revealing character and plot with arch wit and insight on the human condition. ("'Let's got to the faucet' said Daddy Drop. 'Okay.' Mommy Drop.")  It was all brilliantly non-linear and almost Beckettian - the family seems to have gone through the action of going to the faucet twice before even making the flimsiest of plans to do so.  Brilliant as it was, it stuck a failing grade in that this patter played out with minor variations (more of the Beckett influence) chapter after chapter after chapter. The drops go to the sink.  The drops hang out on a washcloth for a while. The drops go down the drain.  You get the idea.


Skip ahead a decade or so and I found myself at home from school with an ass-kicker of a fever.  The doctors didn't know what was wrong with me. It was kind of mononucleosis-like, but tested negative and fortunately didn't have the long-tail of mono. But in that week I was home it was at the time the sickest I had ever been... and honestly I don't recall that I've been sicker than that since.  At one point my spleen inflammed to some absurd proportion of its original size.  It was so painful that three times on my way to the phone (just at the top of the stairs from my bedroom) to phone for help, my body decided it had had enough and that it was far more comfortable to be unconscious.  I figure that if I had been sicker than that since that I would remember it... but then again it's hard to say that for sure.  I was pretty much openly hallucinating with the fever and somewhere in there, out of virtually nowhere, I wrote a play.  Part of it was written in my right-mind.  Much of it wasn't.  Certainly I adjusted much of it in re-writes once I was healthy again, but it still bore the mark of the state of delusion I was in.  My high-school drama teacher had me submit it to the Canadian Young Playwright's search.  My play, "Don't Ask Me. I Just Live Here" won the damned thing!  The other plays all clearly had come from writers who had been encouraged by their teachers to "write what you know."  Every runner-up play in the showcase they had featured the same set-piece - high-school hallway lockers.  I kind of suspect that I won more on the grounds of being the most unique play in the group than due to any content.
If you must know, the play was a rather pollyannaish two-hander about a dweeby-guy who is told the secrets of the universe by a guardian angel before being carted away for having a messiah complex.


That early success pushed me onwards.  I've written a schwack-load of plays that you probably haven't seen.  I toured the continent for six years with a comedy-troupe that I wrote the lion's share of material for.  I have had two screenplays produced, one of which will never see the light of day and the other which is just becoming publically available around the time I write this author's note.  I've won some other awards and contributed to magazines and blogs and assisted both a Leacock winning author (on a host of projects) and one of the world's genuine extant cult-novelists (as well as adapting his greatest work for the stage).  I have other screenplays and a TV series on the boil and more ideas than I will ever be able to complete... but there's one thing I've never written. A novel.


It's tough to talk much about how the creative ideas that lead to this work came to be without giving up some major spoilers, so suffice to say that this darned thing has been banging around in my head for years, getting bigger and more complex.  At some point I realized that it was a novel not a film or TV series and sometime after that I realized that it was too big to be one book and was better suited to be three.


Generally speaking, I don't outline.  But I do tend to only work on projects that I've been letting percolate in the gray-matter for quite some time.  I'd call myself a discovery writer.  I write linearly from beginning to end of a story (and then edit and rewrite)  But truth be told, I am working off a fairly detailed blueprint that only exists in my head.  This particular blueprint - the one for Necropolis - is about as done as I can make it without putting words to paper.  So it is time.


But here's the thing... this is a big-damn project.  A trilogy.  Generally speaking, no publisher is interested in taking on a trilogy from a first time novelist.  Not as a proposed work.  Not as a completed set.  Not as the "somewhere in between" version - a complete first novel and two planned sequels.  Really, writing a trilogy is about the least sound choice a first-time novelist can make.  But it's the story I am prepared to write, so I have to find a way to reach an audience beyond my own imagination and there is really no better way I can think of than trial by fire.  Lets face it, if I can't interest people in this story when they are getting it for free on the internet, then I have no business writing long-form prose fiction, I should stick to screen and stage.


This is by definition, a labour of love.  I have to pay the rent somehow, so this will have to take a back-seat at times to paying the bills and raising my daughter and so on, but so long as there is interest in this story I will keep writing it.  I hope to get at least a little bit of it out every week - and at least at first I am going to try to get two installments out per week, as well as any additional content I deem relevant or necessary (like other author's notes.)


I encourage and look forward to your comments.  You are not only my audience, you are my editor.
I hope you enjoy this.  I plan to.


Here we go...