About Children of the Crescent Moon

This blog post is devoted to my unpublished novel Children of the Crescent Moon. As it is unpublished, there is no link to buy it or read it, though I do have a Facebook group about it, with currently 1,399 members, though it is also about other writing projects as well.

Visit my writing group about Children of the Crescent Moon

When I was 14 years old I had a short story and a poem both submitted to Puffinalia by my school, nominated as the school's best writing for that month, and they were both then published in Puffinalia as well, with the first one, Bob the Potato, winning the short story of the month award for June 1989 while the second one, a poem called Hopelessness, was simply published in the August 1989 edition of the same monthly magazine. They both won other awards at school as well, and were up on display in the hallways for parents, teachers, students and family members to view, along with the other pieces that various students had written or drawn or painted. They were both up there for several months each, for all to see.

Sometime after that, I was phoned by someone from Penguin Books, the publisher who owned Puffin Books and in turn owned Puffinalia. The phone call was kind of a part of the whole point behind Puffinalia, which was to encourage children to write. I was thus encouraged to write a novel.

"We are sure that you have one good novel in you," the voice on the other end encouraged me, "and we want to be the ones who help you to publish it."

There was no guarantee that they would publish it. All they promised was to consider it, to read it and tell me honestly if it was any good. If it was good enough, they would publish it straight away. If it was not quite there, then they'd give me hints and tips for what I had to change. If it was terrible, they'd tell me to try something else. If it was really awful, then they might even want me to go away.

The problem was that I had no idea what to write about and, with all of the pressures of Grade 10 looming, the last thing I wanted to do was to write a novel.

That was in 1989, and, while they didn't give me an actual deadline, I kind of knew that I basically had a year, or maybe two years at most. Puffin Books published books by children for children, and at your 16th birthday they no longer considered you to be a child. That put my deadline at 1st of January 1991, as on the 2nd I would turn 16. I basically had 13 months to write a novel or else the offer was off the table.

I had a few thoughts about it and basically it was the true story behind the two pieces they had published. Both Bob the Potato and Hopelessness were really about what was going on in my life right then. The problem was that I couldn't talk about it. I couldn't tell anyone. Even writing a fictional story about it was risky. Even writing a metaphor was terrifying. Yet I kind of knew that this was what story I had to write.

I got my awards at the end of 1990, where they put me on the honour roll for the first time, an achievement that would set me up for a good matriculation college, a good university and then a good career. That was more important than a book. I had also won a scholarship for most improved, laughably because my average marks were no different. I had lowered my marks in English and History so as to raise them in Science and Accounting. I was aiming for that honour roll, focusing my attention in areas that made me look good. I got the highest marks in the school in 3 subjects, none of which were English. I knew I couldn't get top in English so didn't bother. I could get top in Maths and Accounting, though, as well as in Advanced Mathematics. They didn't give me the awards, though. The scholarship, a one-off payment of some $900, was instead of the awards they should have given me.

If I had written that novel then, when Penguin wanted me to, there was no way I would have had enough time to get such good marks. It was a choice I made. I went for a sensible option instead of a hope and dream. And with it I threw away the offer that Penguin had made.

The story didn't disappear from my thoughts, though, and eventually, in 1996, when I was 21 years old, some 7 years after I was asked to write it, I finally wrote it all down. It was after something happened in real life, a terrible tragedy called The Port Arthur Massacre. It made major worldwide news. Nobody believed me when I said that that was a part of the story I was writing about. Nobody had believed me when I warned them it was going to happen, either. Nobody would believe my story. I had to fictionalise it.

So I wrote it down. I called it Star Children. I read over it. It was a nice plan but there was something wrong about it. It was the best thing I'd ever written, but it could be better. I wasn't happy with it.

My sister had a look at it and she told me that I'd gone too far in hiding the fact that it was based on a true story. I had called my main characters Xyxylix and Zykklik. I had set it on a distant planet with creatures unheard of on earth. It was too different. It was hard to relate to.

Most importantly, though, I didn't have a satisfactory ending.

The offer from Penguin was off the table but I knew that if I could make it good enough I could submit it anyway. Forget about any promises. I just needed to make it good.

It was too much like Star Wars. It read like a Star Wars fan fic. That wasn't what I wanted. I needed to get rid of the Star part of the title. So I replaced it with Moon. Moon Children didn't sound right either. That made me think of werewolves. So I went with Children of the Crescent Moon. That was fine.

Someone later claimed that Crescent Moon was a symbol of Islam. It isn't actually, though it is a symbol often associated with Arab countries, who in turn is the major place where Islam exists. Just the same, the Crescent Moon exists in other religions too. It is a symbol of awakening power. Sailor Moon had a crescent moon and she isn't Muslim.

In 1999 something happened: my step father died. He died sitting on the toilet, with a bottle of beer in one hand and a burned out cigarette in the other. It wasn't a satisfactory end, as we really wanted him to die from being shot by police, or dying in prison. He had gotten away with his crimes, only to die, sitting on the toilet, at the age of 38. We presumed it was a heart attack but didn't bother with an autopsy. His body was found some 3 days after he had died.

I had my ending.

Of course, I didn't have that ending. I made a metaphor for it. I had a few goes at it but then I had one that I was happy with. I realised that I didn't need an epic ending, that I was better off with a realistic one, one that made you think.

My novel was complete.

My sister called someone she knew at Penguin and got them to have a read of it.

"It's terrible," he told me. "We are not publishing that."

My heart sank. I thought it was pretty good. The plot was amazing. It was unique. It was unusual. It was unlike anything anyone had ever done before.

"It's just too rough for us, too raw, and the thought that you spent 10 years getting to this is worrying for us," he told me.

I was just about in tears.

I am a bad writer, I told myself.

So that was it, the end of my dream. I'd throw it away, never to be looked at again. I tried, and I failed.

Giving up on that dream was replaced with real life, getting my first real job at the age of 25, as opposed to the silly jobs I had had before juggling for a living, or helping to run children's parties, face painting, or taking kids for rides on horses. That was all fantasy. In reality I would type hospital notes, write reports about children who were abused. Write recommendations for who got custody of children. They weren't even my decisions. I was just typing. I had to give up on dreams. I was at least a professional writer, just not a fiction writer.

I got some work writing sports writing too, starting at a website called Cricinfo during the 1999 World Cup in England, and then expanding after that. A former cricket player called Sunil Gavaskar recommended me. Some of my writing was highly thought of. Others were ridiculed. I just focused on the stuff people liked, the things that were read a million times each, which were reported about on TV.

I was offered paid work a few times but the sums of money were tiny so I didn't bother. $10 here, $20 there, even $50 a couple of times, but I told them to keep my money. Wait until it is good enough for a big pay packet, I told them.

One ended up front page of a Bangladesh newspaper called Prothom Alo, read by 525,000 people. Another was Page 3 of The Age, read by 700,000 people. One they used in the Argus Review into why Australia had lost the 2010/11 Ashes. High-profile celebrities were talking about my work. I wasn't even making any money out of it.

I was a professional writer, writing for a hospital, and my articles were appearing in major newspapers and magazines, at least occasionally. But my novel wasn't going anywhere.

In 2006 I worked out my story, and wrote it down again.

I wasn't sure if it was going to be any good. The 2002 and 2003 versions were terrible, worse even than the one that was rejected back in 1999. But, as I finished it off, I knew that this one was good.

"I'm sending it to Penguin," my sister told me, after she had read it.

"I didn't ask you to send it off. I wanted to know what you think," I told her.

"This is good. This is really good. They'll publish it for sure. I can guarantee they will," she told me.

Suddenly I got a phone call from a guy at Penguin, a senior editor apparently. We hadn't set up a meeting, he just called.

"We'd like to publish your book," he told me. "I've read the manuscript and it is simply brilliant. We think it will sell a lot of copies."

"How many?" I asked him.

"At least 20,000, maybe even 50,000," he told me. "It's hard to say for sure but we are confident it will be a best seller. This is going to be huge."

I stopped. "So not as big as Harry Potter then?"

He paused. "Harry Potter was a fluke, a once in a generation story."

"I didn't like it much. I found it to be average. It showed that she was a first-time writer. Her later works were better."

"Yes but that was unique and unusual. Nobody had ever written like that before."

"My work is unique and unusual. My work is more unique and more unusual. Surely my work can compete with Harry Potter."

"20,000 copies is a lot of copies. Aren't you satisfied with that?"

I sighed. I didn't want to sound arrogant, but to be honest I wasn't happy with that. I wanted more. I was expecting a million.

"How many copies do you want it to sell?"

"A million," I answered.

"A million? No, this one won't sell a million copies. Well, I mean, it might, but no, I doubt it. You'd have to be very lucky."

I should have been jumping up and down. Penguin were going to publish my novel. But I wasn't. I knew it wasn't ready.

The guy seemed to sense how I was feeling, so he asked me.

"On a scale of 0 to 10, with 10 being the best it could be, and 0 being worthless, how would you rate your novel as it exists right now?" he asked me.

I had to think about it. "7," I told him finally. "7 out of 10."

It was a test, of course. If I lied and told him 10 out of 10 when it wasn't, then he wasn't going to deal with me, but if I was honest and said anything other than 10 out of 10 then he was going to tell me to go back and do more. It was like a trap, a trap that I couldn't wriggle out of.

"We can help you to improve it a bit. If it was a 9 out of 10 then we could work with you to get it to 10 out of 10. We could maybe even do it from an 8 out of 10. But not from a 7. From a 7, all we can do is get it to an 8. We can't get it to the level that you want it to get to."

I had that sinking feeling, that horrible feeling like I had wasted an opportunity.

"So what do you want me to do?" I asked him.

"We are prepared to publish it now if you want to, and it can be that first novel that so many people write that isn't all that good, then focus on your second novel, which will be better. Just like JK Rowling with Harry Potter, her first book wasn't as good as her second, so we can do the same thing with you, and publish this average, or slightly better than average book, and then your second one will be better," he told me.

"I don't want to waste this one as a first novel. It's too important to release it as an average book," I told him, hating my own words.

"Then we need you to improve it yourself. Go back and elevate it. Take it from a 7 to an 8 then from an 8 to a 9. Come back to us when it is a 9 out of 10," he told me.

"How will I know?" I asked him.

"You'll know. You knew when you had elevated it before, didn't you?"

"Yeah."

"So you'll know this time."

And so we "shook hands", as it were, agreeing to our verbal agreement that I would come to them again not with one elevation but with two.

After that, in 2011, I had an elevation, and I so desperately wanted to contact them, but I resisted the urge.

Then in 2018 I had a second elevation.

"It's ready," I told myself, and I knew it was.

"Nobody reads books anymore," their receptionist told me when I called them, refusing to pass me on to the editor. I wondered if it would have helped if I had just gone down to their offices with my manuscript and just sat there waiting.

My book was 9/10. It was bubbling, bursting with brilliance. It was going to sell a million copies like this. I knew it would.

But Penguin didn't care.

"Go into the open submissions call the same as everyone else," the receptionist told me.

For 6 months they didn't have one. Then they had a competition for the best story of the year. I had to enter it, and win it, if I was to be published with them.

I could have gone with a literary agent, only in Australia they ban fantasy, and not a single one would even look at it. Overseas literary agents were fine, but they could only represent me to overseas companies, and only literary agents in USA would even do that.

I contacted one US-based literary agent, who replied by telling me that I was in Australia and so she wouldn't represent me. She hadn't even read it, or even the start of it. It took 3 months to get that response.

With baited breath I waited for the outcome of the competition. If my book was worth a million sales, then surely it'd win this competition.

"We're sorry but we have decided not to accept any fantasy submissions," read the e-mail, "and as such your submission has been removed from the competition."

Penguin had changed their rules mid-competition. They were no longer accepting any fantasy.

Nor was anyone.

"It's temporary," they told me. "It's just until the market stops being so oversaturated with fantasy novels."

It isn't fantasy, of course, not really. It's based on a true story. It's more true than the one that won the competition, about a car crash and how two sisters who were in the car crash had very different views of what happened. This one is about child abuse. This one is more important.

I haven't given up on it, far from it, it's just that it's difficult. It was hard to write, and even harder to publish it. Not because it's bad but just because of all of the silly little rules they have.

I could, of course, publish it with a minor publisher. I could obviously self-publish it too. But I'd kind of look a bit silly if I did that now. If I was going to do that, I should have just accepted the 2006 offer.

Different people have given me different perspectives of it. Some have told me I am too slow in writing it or that I upset Penguin too much by rejecting their offer. I don't know about that. It didn't take me a long time to write it. I just wanted it to be good. I refused to present something that wasn't good.

How long would a second novel take me to write? Probably 2 months. I have 12 planned. I could probably get them out in a year if I was doing it full-time, if I was paid a living wage to write them.

I'm not a professional writer. I mean, I am, but I'm not a professional fiction writer. I have other things going on. This isn't all I do.

I finally worked out a nice short blurb for it:

"Two children with incredible powers must kill the greatest hero the world has ever known."

It's funny how I can summarise a 12 year period of my life, metaphorically described in this novel that took me some 30 years to write, in a single sentence, in two lines. It hardly seems right.

It's a super hero story at its heart. They have a power that can do almost anything. They can disintegrate an entire city instantly with a mere thought, so long as their hands are touching. They can kill a million people at once. They could destroy the entire earth if they wanted to. But why would you want to?

On the other side is the hero, who has the same power but he doesn't have to hold anyone's hand. His power relies on their power existing. He doesn't want to kill them: he just wants them to be kept apart. They don't want to kill him either: they just want to go on with their lives, except that they can't, for if they do that then he will enslave all of humanity. They have to kill him. If they don't then everyone is enslaved, or worse.

There's so many stories within the story too. It's about religion, from the perspective that all of the world's religions are the same religion, but told from different points of view. It's about humanity's origins, explaining how we came to be. It has mythology within it, legends within it.

There is only one bad guy in this story. Everyone else is doing bad things because they think they have to, because they think it's justified, because they think it is good in some secret way overall. There's only one good guy too, but it isn't either of my main characters. The one good guy is a girl, a newborn baby when the story starts, who they don't meet until later. She is someone whose parents and whole family was brutally murdered, her mother taking her to safety with 4 spears lodged in her back, dying when she gives her up, then the woman who takes her has her own family murdered too, in punishment for taking the child, and then she too eventually dies, giving the child to the children, to the heroes of my story, and they adopt her as their daughter. The little girl, with no powers whatsoever, is why they win. She is the only one with a pure heart, the only one who is honest, who never tells a lie, who is always good. They don't win because they have powers. They win because they tell the truth and do the right thing.

I remember on his deathbed my Granddad told me what was to come and told me what I had to do. He made me promise that I would stop what was to come, even if it cost me my life. If I didn't promise, and didn't stop it, then I would certainly die, killed by what was to come.

He was right, of course, but at 12 years old I didn't really understand why.

Children of the Crescent Moon isn't my story, though. This is your story. It is a story that you can relate to, to apply as a metaphor for whatever you might be going through, as a roadmap to survive, a way to cope, a way to win through to the other side.

If you have never had anything bad happen in your life, then this is just a fun little fantasy, but if you have had something bad happen, and want to see that little ray of hope, or a way to get through it, this is that hope.

That's what my story is about.