Time Crystal

After a week or more of depression about not getting any feedback on TC I finally take the plunge and sent a copy to script doctor John Jarrold yesterday. He’s a highly experienced editor of many works of SF/Fantasy to judge from his web site and the help he gives free to people on the Chronicles Network so if he shows me where TC is wrong it’ll be worth the money. And there MUST be plenty wrong with it.
I have very little experience selling into the vicious and merciless battlefield they call book publishing. I published my first book Hyperdictionary through a commercial publisher but that was a factual book and was snapped up by the first publisher I wrote to. I couldn’t find a publisher for Global Vision and had to publish it myself. Fiction is a different ball game. Even worse I know nothing about the Young Adult market, which is the target audience (since this is the group that drop science). I have no idea whether the work will appeal to this group (except for feedback from Tehun, but he might not be at all typical).
Got up this morning feeling much better. At last I have a hope of getting some constructive feedback from somebody who understands the craft and the market. I begin to do my paid work (British Association) with a light heart. Even begin to tidy the clutter off my desks which have been threatening to overwhelm the keyboard and even look at the piles of books scattered around my office and wonder if they might get shelved sometime soon.
Of course it may not last but it’s wonderful to have the clouds of anxiety lift for even a few hours. When you invest your life in a project it’s a great help if you share the burden with somebody who can advise you where you’re going wrong. Especially at this early stage. Even after five years hard work I am still really only at the beginning and I could still turn the whole thing round. For example JJ might say that Alex should be much closer in age to Catriona (as he originally was) or that chapters 4 to 7 should be compressed into a single chapter (as I suspect) or that the Prologue doesn’t work for the target audience (which I also suspect).
Still I’ll try to put all this aside for a few days and get on with my other life until I hear from the dear old doctor.

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When the entire Universe was smaller than a single atom
And the Laws of Nature had not yet been fully formed;
During the earliest moments of that inconceivable cosmic catastrophe
Which scientists calmly call the Big Bang;
While fundamental physical forces fought among themselves
Like armies warring for supremacy:
Then it was the Magnetic Monopole was created.

Born at the junction of three disparate regions,
Where the new-formed physical fields were aligned by chance
Along divergent and incompatible vectors,
The Monopole was as confused as a child finding itself
On the disputed border of three nations
Speaking different languages, obeying different laws-
Sharing aspects of all but not belonging to any.

It watched with curiosity the distant appearance
Of splashes of light tracing out walls and filaments around
Vast dark oceans of almost empty space.
Occasionally a line of magnetic force would draw the Monopole
Into one of these glowing places and it found itself
Wandering through a galactic island of billions of stars,
Only to emerge aeons later without finding its home.

From the multitudes of particles teeming around it
The Monopole was isolated, stateless, rejected, unique.
For the next fourteen thousand million years
It wandered across the changing face of the universe
Searching desperately, constantly seeking a home
And forever failing to find one.

Two hundred million years ago the Monopole
Followed a magnetic line of force into yet another galaxy
The plate-shaped spiral-armed structure called the Milky Way,
And began to wind its way through the mass of gas, dust, stars and planets
Spread out around it in a disc. It followed the magnetic field
Along a spiral arm and passed very close to
A middle-aged main-sequence star, the Sun,
Surrounded by a small array of planets.

And so it was that on the morning of Wednesday
Fourth of April 2012 the Magnetic Monopole
Approached the blue surface of a tiny, insignificant planet, the Earth.
Here it found a magnetic field strong enough to bring it to rest.
The Magnetic Monopole was finally approaching
The home it had been seeking since time began.

Having listened to the first few chapters of Volume 1 again on the way up to Nottingham after not hearing them for a couple of weeks I realise that chapter 1 lacks tension. I revert to an idea that I had and rejected earlier, to introduce the magnetic monopole as a character in the story. Implemented it and added to this web site. I think it adds tension and shows a bit of what’s at stake right from the beginning.

A very kind reader called Dragonmuse has left the following comment on Chapter 1 on the Sky-Tribe web site:

This is so like Star Trek, with all the terminology that makes great sci fi and no sense at all! I chuckled and hoped it was meant to be humourous! The level of anticipation and threat are great, considering how little understanding came from the actual words! I think this is very clever! “The way he spoke, as if he weighed and measured every word before he permitted himself to utter it, was just one of the odd things about Michael Riley. The strange smell that hung about him was another.” LOL.
Keep writing!

Now actually it wasn’t meant to be humourous and although it might not make any sense to Dragonmuse this stuff is pretty close to what the operators will actually say when ATLAS actually starts working. (By the way it was announced yesterday that the LHC first run has been postphoned until May 2008, a five month delay!)

Still I don’t mind at all if readers find my stuff amusing. Better that than not to read it at all! The worst thing that can happen to a writer is to be totally ignored.

The weather forecast for today was the best for two weeks and better than next week. We’ve had heavy rain, floods and almost continuous grey skies and strong winds, but today we were promised some sun so I took off to the Cotswolds.

I went first to Compton Verney, a country mansion that Peter Moores bought with his profits from football pools (gambling) to display his art collection. I didn’t go to look at the pictures. You have to pay to get in and anyway I’m not that interested in art any more. I used to be, but that’s a different story. I went, as is often the case these days, to see a girl but she wasn’t there.

Then I went to Upton House to photograph their guide books. You can’t photograph the pictures but their guides have small illustrations and explanations and I wanted to copy some information. I was told I couldn’t photograph it but could get the image off their web site.

Two failures so far, but there were a number of successes for the day. First I found a couple of useful books in Leamington, one especially helpful. Can’t tell you what it is as that would spoil the plot. The other success was that on the way home I had a drink at the Dirty Duck, a pub opposite the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford upon Avon. This has a terrace overlooking the river and I’ve often wondered whether it was full of actors when I’ve walked passed it in the past.

(Just as an aside I only discovered the difference between past and passed while proofing Time Crystal. Past refers to time while passed refers to space. Can’t believe I’ve lived nearly 60 years without knowing this elementary distinction!)

It turns out the Dirty Duck is full of just ordinary people talking about ordinary things and I stood on the terrace like a potted plant watching them doing it and feeling out of place and I decided that as well as joining writers groups I could also join an amateur dramatic group.

My whole life now is centered around writing, plotting, drama, characters, dialogue, story-telling. I need to meet people who share those interests. I realise that the chance of having a valuable relationship with anyone who doesn’t share those kinds of interests is pretty remote. I’ve met one who did but she’s gone off now doing other things and anyway she was too far away. And of course I should also talk to men about these things too. And a theatre or film company is the ideal group. Writing, as I’ve said before, is such a lonely occupation. Now I’ve done all the hard work on TC it’s time for me to make friends and get a life. The next four or five volumes should be relatively easy. I’ve written two chapters of volume 2 this week as well as entering all my accounting data for last year and catching up on outstanding BA work, so it seems like things will go fairly smoothly from now on. The characters are driving the plot now and I’m just sitting back and letting them do it. (Well not quite. I’m still having to do some research as you can see from the above, but it’s almost true.)

I’m not sure that writing has to be lonely. I can’t see why a group can’t write together. I ought to give it a try at some point and see if it can be made to work.

Following the trip on Monday to deliver the MS I decided I needed to talk to writers, sharing the pain and seeing how others cope. Miraculously (you might say) I found that the Coventry Writer’s Group (http://www.writers-circles.com/coventry.html) met on the Tuesday so I cancelled another meeting and went along. Got there early (as usual) and wandered around the scruffy Tam O’Shanter Club. The doors were locked. Two women in wheelchairs were waiting outside and one said “The door’s locked.” Through the windows I could see that half the rooms were empty and I had gone back to my car when I decided to give it one more try. Maybe they started late.
Sure enough people started arriving and the event commenced around 8:00pm. A mixture of highly talkative and extremely quiet people, and Chairman Mike Sherratt doing a good job of sharing his wide knowledge and experience. I read out the first page of TC and they praised it. Then others read out their work and they praised that as well, although I criticised it. I find that honest and valid criticism is far more valuable than uncritical praise, and this point was raised by Pam (one of the wheelchair ladies).
Also managed to talk to Jeff who has a Roald Dahl sense of humour and is planning a wonderful story. Also a lady called Maxine was there who had been at a class I attended on writing at Warwick University some years ago, although she didn’t remember me.

Altogether a worthwhile meeting. I’ll go along next month. Makes you feel less lonely. Probably need to be more positive about other people’s work though.

Wandered in euphoric oblivion through London under imminent danger, despite the terrorist threat level being on the highest level of Critical, thinking only that this glorious day had at long last arrived when I could deliver the MS on the day of the deadline.

Took the tube to Ealing Broadway, the end of the Central Line and probably beyond the end of the civilised world, judging from the soporific state of the pubs.

I insisted on getting a signed receipt for the MS (I’m now the proud owner of Sophie Holmes’ signature at Transworld).

Needless to say the rest of the day was a let-down and I had an increasing feeling of emptiness, somewhat akin to grief. Even standing in the sunshine outside the Crown in Soho watching the women go by gave only temporary respite. Spent a few minutes checking out the pictures in the National Gallery (part of my research for volume 2) but I found them disappointing. They appear to have only one original Hans Holbein the Younger which is a scandal considering how much work he did here. I saw more useful material (from my point of view) at Upton House on Sunday. Can’t reveal too much, and anyway these early ideas for how the plot will develop often come to nothing, but I’ve left Catriona in a pickle at the end of volume 1 so I need to work out how she survives.

So even before submitting the MS I was already starting to plot the second volume. No time for grief or self-indulgence. On with the show!