My first novel, Falling Up
I thought a good beginning for my blog would be to give some background about my novel.
In the 90s when I was first thinking about writing, I took a distance-learning course for writing for children. I thought that would be a good place to start. At the end of that course, they let me know about their Canada-wide 1999 Writing for Children's Competition.
I submitted a short story based on an idea I had. The requirements were to submit a 500 word short story. I felt like I was sweating blood to get it down to that number. I was one of 66 entries out of 800 to make it to the second round. My story was not one of the 12 which went to the final round.
They did offer some encouraging comments. One was that my story was a "worthy addition to the post-holocaust genre". Another was that "This is an intriguing piece by a skilful writer and I think that this could easily be expanded into a novel." Fast-forward to last year, when I sat down and finally wrote the first draft of my first novel, Falling Up. That short story became chapter one — in a longer form. Those 500 words turned into more than 150,000 words. The 500 words became a more than 500 page novel. The 6X9 paperback is thick!
Here's the introduction from the novel:
The bombs fell, and so did civilization. Anarchy reigned for a while, but strong-willed individuals rose to power among scattered people groups. Some did so for the betterment of everyone. Most did so only for themselves. Add to that, the remnants of drug rings which now have no borders, no one limiting their distribution. It's a very serious situation. Somebody ought to do something about it.
The story idea came from thinking about what it would be like to be able to control gravity with one's mind. Being able to fly is the most obvious result, but there are more things than that, and I explore those and the physics surrounding gravity in the novel.
That short story was for children, so I wrote it as a child. The story then follows the main character through the years of him growing up in a largely frontier-level technology world. Being able to fly means many scenes are in various places in the world.
In the 90s when I was first thinking about writing, I took a distance-learning course for writing for children. I thought that would be a good place to start. At the end of that course, they let me know about their Canada-wide 1999 Writing for Children's Competition.
I submitted a short story based on an idea I had. The requirements were to submit a 500 word short story. I felt like I was sweating blood to get it down to that number. I was one of 66 entries out of 800 to make it to the second round. My story was not one of the 12 which went to the final round.
They did offer some encouraging comments. One was that my story was a "worthy addition to the post-holocaust genre". Another was that "This is an intriguing piece by a skilful writer and I think that this could easily be expanded into a novel." Fast-forward to last year, when I sat down and finally wrote the first draft of my first novel, Falling Up. That short story became chapter one — in a longer form. Those 500 words turned into more than 150,000 words. The 500 words became a more than 500 page novel. The 6X9 paperback is thick!
Here's the introduction from the novel:
The bombs fell, and so did civilization. Anarchy reigned for a while, but strong-willed individuals rose to power among scattered people groups. Some did so for the betterment of everyone. Most did so only for themselves. Add to that, the remnants of drug rings which now have no borders, no one limiting their distribution. It's a very serious situation. Somebody ought to do something about it.
The story idea came from thinking about what it would be like to be able to control gravity with one's mind. Being able to fly is the most obvious result, but there are more things than that, and I explore those and the physics surrounding gravity in the novel.
That short story was for children, so I wrote it as a child. The story then follows the main character through the years of him growing up in a largely frontier-level technology world. Being able to fly means many scenes are in various places in the world.
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