Here’s the view from where I am now 🙂

I’m down in Bateman’s Bay chilling out and have uploaded Chapter 5 which is now available here (or via the Statues of Angels menu item):

Statues of Angels – Chapter 5

This chapter was only “finished” on Friday night before I left to play a gig with my band Numidia. As per the last post, Phew!

I was determined to maintain my monthly deadline of the 10th, rain, hail or shine, so please forgive me if it is a bit tougher than other releases. As always this is towards my first draft so grammar and punctuation will be corrected a bit on the next pass through.

As a disclaimer of sorts / request for sensitivity feedback, there is a small section on Indigenous Australian’s in this chapter. I am concerned it may be a little inaccurate / may come across as a little ignorant and have since done some more research and will probably change it a little. However, in order to make the deadline I must leave it as it is for now. I think it works, but if you read and like me think it might need some tampering, please let me know as I deeply respect our first peoples / indigenous Australians.

This chapter again was very difficult to complete to this point, mainly owing to the Deene Baudin / Martyr storyline finding the right tone and level of information divulge. If you’ve read up until Chapter 5 you will know what I’m talking about, but if not; I’ve been developing a character’s storyline in reverse (ala Chris Nolan’s awesome film, Momento) which is a task in itself. However, I have decided to tell this story from the perspective of third persons peripheral to this character, which is another level.

Now, obviously this comes across as an experimental technique for flair only. But to me this is what is most makes this character’s development interesting and something I want to explore. The central character of this plot line is a terrorist who explodes a bomb and kills many people, and approaching this is complicated in itself, but I found the way that felt right, was to have some of it from his perspective as first person, and then to see what others thought of him in his past (good and bad).

The novel is about life, and coming to terms with the inevitability of death, and in our own lives there is no omniscient third perspective, we only know people from our perspectives and others know us from theirs, and we are all the main characters of our own narratives. So I am extremely excited to find out what other people thought of this man, Deene Baudin, the Martyr, why they helped or hindered him, see through the participants of this cult, The Crimson Moon, what they know and believe and how they got there. It is also really cool to explore the world they live in after the Discovery. We get to see really closely how the world has changed!

I’m not sure if I’ve put this here or not but I’m currently structuring this first draft as a three act structure of 6 chapters, 8 chapters, 6 chapters. So with Chapter 5 now up, I’m really working hard for things at the end of Chapter 6 to be the culmination of what has happened so far and to then morph and change as we settle into “the meat” of the book. We’ll be travelling to America, seeing more of Russia, seeing what life is like on a spaceship when there is no narrative device of hypersleep to skip to the action bits. I’ll be exploring more of our crew on the Sirrius – knowing more of Ceylan and Dragan. It’s going to be awesome!

Also as an FYI, as I’m away and releasing this from my phone, the Recap document is not a nice fancy news article-like thingo, it’s more of a standard document. I’ll update this once I’m back home.

Now to get out into the day! \m/