Saturday, January 24, 2009

How it all started


According to Darwin, evolution is a process that can be summarized as the survival of the fittest. Yet there are countless examples that seem to contradict that. Some of nature’s changes are too swift to be explained solely by linear evolution. I dreamed up a mechanism that could account for these leaps in evolution and the result was the Perfect Circle concept.

Writing it was another matter. From idea to proofread manuscript, it took eight years. But this is a little misleading. The original Perfect Circle was over half a million words. When I realized the impossibility of its publication in a single volume I separated the story into four parts and structured four novels:

Bad Water
This novel narrates the genesis of the International Mining Corporation in the Alaskan gold rush and tells the story of Hugh Reece,the corporation's owner, and his attempts to cover up a vast ecological disaster in Bangladesh. Paul Reece, a geologist and heir to the IMC empire, sides with the thousands dying from the Minamata disease caused by the corporation.

Moonshards
When at the end of WWII Patton searched the Mekkers mine for the III Reuich bank deposits he discovered that almost six tons of gems, spoils from the concentration camps, had dissappeared. In this adventure Paul Reece chases the gem's elusive trail.

Perfect Circle
Already published under the same title by Bantam.

Aftermath
The last novel explores the difficulties the survivors of a global cataclysm would face in an unstable world and the choices, sometimes harrowing, a group of humans must face to have a chance of surviving.

My agent spotted an opening for a SF work and, since Perfect Circle was the only part that could possibly slot into such a genre, offered it to Bantam and they eventually bought it.

The Prisoner is my next novel for this year and I'm hoping to have Light Bondage, on which Bantam has an option, ready for 2010. As to the remaining three novels that once were part of Perfect Circle... we shall see.

3 comments:

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  2. I for one hope we see a prequel to Perfect Circle. I think it would be an awesome book and we'd get to know one of my favorite characters, Hugh Reece, a little better. I know he's not the protag, but he's interesting.

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  3. I'd be interested in what happens in the book "Aftermath" because Perfect Circle had such an abrupt ending. I think it is good to end at a point where the reader feels like the story continues without them, but I really wanted to know what happens next.

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