Hey up!

Sorry for the lack of activity so far this week in terms of answering inane prompts. I’ve got a better excuse this time around though – indeed, I’m feeling much better since my stomach bug buggered off. It’s because I’ve been focusing on writing up my novel, which I’ve promised to show to you all tomorrow.

I think I may have said this before, but what this entails is the prologue and first chapter up for public viewing. I’m going to be honest, this is as far as I’ve got with my novel so far – it’s not usually recommended that you share your writing at this stage at risk of aggrandising your inner critic. But! Here’s the thing – my novel has a bit of an odd gimmick going for it, as you’ll see. I’m uploading a sample of it to see whether or not people actually like what’s going for it.

What am I going for? A multiple perspective fantasy novel…with aliens innit!

Without going too far to spoil everything (regarding a first chapter, of all things), it’s basically a narrative about a human Technosignature (I.e. Arecibo message follow-up) reaching a far-off galaxy with a handful of alien civilisations in-tact. This event precedes a rather unusual occurence for an individual on – at present, three of – these planets. They start to share eachothers thoughts, subtly at first. Cue the central question of “what the hell does this all signify?”

Kind of think of it as being somewhat inspired by the recent speculative evolution trend going around – e.g. That All Tomorrows craze a year ago – though I’ll be honest again and say that my aliens aren’t currently too biologically accurate. That will change as I do more research and redraft, of course.

What to expect:

• Uploaded on this blog by 18:00 BST
• 6500 words – about a twenty minute read (your mileage may vary)
• Different narrative styles for each perspective – mostly experimental at the moment. Subject to change in future.
• A bit of odd presentation past the prologue. Part of the aforementioned gimmick. The least of what you can expect is varying fonts – I’ve tried to choose highly legible ones, but again this is subject to change.
• A rather unflattering depiction of humanity, admittedly – Don’t worry, I’ll be making sure that the other alien races aren’t exactly innocent by comparison. Also, AI generated memes. 8(
• Bit of a content warning – There are sexual references in this. Nothing graphic, mind you. Again, this is in regards to humanity.
• I’ll do my best to mitigate grammatical/spelling mistakes through proofreading, but do expect them. Bash me over the head with them and I’ll fix ’em.
• No bearcats. I’m disappointed too.

What I’d like in return (please)

• Some kind of feedback. It’d really help a writer like me improve. It’d be best if it was constructive criticism – tell me what could be improved if you please.
• That’s it.

Sure, I could be writing this for absolutely no-one’s interest right now, but I might as well take the chance. I’ll be working on refining and expanding the piece all day today – if you see me distracted on wordpress, tell me to get the fudge back to WORK!

Anyway! Hope you’re having a good day. Before I go, I might as well share a bit of my art with you – I was doing some “Lisa the Pointless” (Cred. Serenity forge + Edvinas Kandrotas) styled sprites for some roleplay-campaign friends the other day. Have sir Dan Fortesque (Medievil)…

…And an obligatory binturong!

Anyhoo, see you tomorrow!