CyberDublin: Blurb

Imagine a not-too-distant future where world commerce runs from one huge hyperserver: Oodles. Wallscreens and podphones connect to the all-powerful hub’s online personal computing applications and data storage.

Not only that: Oodles has bought out television, communications, shopping, banking and social networking, as well as the entire Internet. The economy is digitised and cash has become a collector’s item, but in one corner of Ireland the old ways fight to survive.

Enter Rachel, part-time Oodles sysadmin, about to launch into her university career. Her Da, shocked at the Oodles takeover, reveals she’s adopted. Questions plague her. Who are her real parents? Why did they give her up? And why did her Da wait so long to tell her?

Rachel, determined to leave home, rents a big old house near the city. She and her friend Talitha find strangers willing to share it: Bethany, the snarky librarian biker chick; Louise, the fish-and-chips diva with a pregnant tomcat; and Zehrani, the queenly African from the high echelons of Oodles Security.

But all is not rosy in Cyberdublin. Oodles introduces holographic status graphs to display personal information to the world. Rachel, disgusted by the invasion of privacy, refuses to wear it in public despite her Da’s peculiar liking for the new social technology.

Then there are the ragged religious saboteurs, convinced they can delay the end of the world by destroying the dominance of Oodles. But somebody else is quicker. The churchgoers find themselves acting against their own would-be ally after discovering what lies behind the plot. What will Dublin—and the world—look like without the cyber?

Follow Rachel’s search for identity in the midst of global crisis, as the sabotage mystery unfolds with a twist she’d never dare imagine.

With today’s cloud-computing technology, this scenario is possible even now. Cyberdublin will appeal to the Celtic fascination within those of Irish descent and those who wish they were. Web users will find laughs aplenty, too.

Book Lowdown - CYBERDUBLIN

This survey is going around amongst my writer friends at the moment and I thought it looked like fun, especially since I just got some major work finished on my next novel, CyberDublin. So here goes...and I've taken the liberty of deleting those questions I didn't like.


1. What’s your word count? 57,000

2. How long until you finish? A few more tweaks, maybe another scene or two.

3. If you have finished, how long did it take you? I wrote the first draft in one month - yes, in Ireland. It then languished for over two years until I finished it last week - finished as far as I know.

4. Do you have an outline? Yes, but I changed it SO much as I went - when it proved boring.

6. How many words do you typically write a day? During the stint in Ireland I did about 5k a day - three in the morning, and two in the evening.

7. What was your greatest word count in one day? Dunno, maybe 6k.

9. What inspired you to write? Google. Not a search, but the business entity itself. Plus my devious mind.

10. Does your novel have a theme song? Be Thou My Vision - drum and bass version by Clank. Hang on, let me grab it for you. Have a listen to this while you read the rest of the post.



11. Assign each of your major characters a theme song.

Rachel: All Shook Up (Elvis)
Talitha: Lean On Me (DC Talk version)
Conor: Not Afraid (Eminem)
Louise: A Hard Day's Night (Beatles)
Zehrani: Material Girl (Madonna)
Bethany: Signs of Life (Steven Curtis Chapman) 

12. Which character is most like you? Rachel

13. Which character would you most likely be friends with? Talitha

15. Who is your favorite character in your novel? Conor, actually.

16. Have your characters ever done something completely unexpected? You bet. Conor was meant to be the bad guy, but he absolutely refused.

17. Have you based any of your novel directly on personal experiences? Mainly the settings around Dublin from time spent there.

24. What is the best line? 

I threw the book aside. My task was real. Not fantasy. And here was the wannabe hero, reading of magic and monsters. Some good that would do. I sat there for the longest time, until the last sip of cold coffee trickled down my throat and the light of morning announced itself at the kitchen window.

God help us all.

28. Summarize your novel in under fifteen words. 
The all-encompassing cyberworld crashes, causing chaos in its Dublin heart and in personal lives.

29. Do you love all your characters? Yes, except maybe Sweeney.

32. Describe your main character in three words. Longings, questions, determination.

35. How many romantic relationships take place in your novel? One.

36. Are there any explosions in your novel? Only the virtual kind.

45. Who has pets in your novel and what are they? Louise has a cat she thought was a tom but then turns out to be pregnant and the household ends up with four kittens.

46. Are there angels, demons, or any religious references/figures in your novel? Nothing supernatural this time, but references, yes.

51. Is there humor? It's Irish, for goodness sake! It better be funny.

52. Is there tragedy? Only in economic terms, mostly for big business.

57. Has your novel provided insight about your life? I suppose so. I certainly built in lots of intimate encounters with actual locations I experienced.

58. Your personality? Perhaps. Whenever I got bored, I switched POV, which may or may not be a good thing.

59. Has your novel inspired anyone? Not yet as far as I know. Maybe this year. But don't anyone go sabotaging the Internet, now! It's more of a light-action humour fling than a deep-and-meaningful thing.

68. How would you react if your novel was erased entirely? Not happening, because so many people have got copies of it :)

71. What advice would you give to a fellow writer? In writing this book I learned to have fun in the process. If you're forcing it out, it's probably not good writing.

72. Describe your ending in three words. Housewarming. Confession. Hope.

75. Was it worth it? Of course!

Summer Santas and Elves

While you enjoy that little bit of Kiwi Christmas fun, consider that those guys ran 10km in santa suits to fundraise for the GP youth group - in other words, to fund cool camps and events and help out those kids who otherwise couldn't go bowling and that sort of thing.

So what else is new? I FINISHED A STORY!! Woohoo! This is unusual as it is not part of my Comet Born series nor even in my preferred genre. It remains to be seen whether it's any good; unfortunately, it seems to have ended up all chicky and romantic, which no doubt is why I had such a hard time writing it. Did I mention I can't stand reading romance? Ick. More on that later, if it ever sees the light of day.  Still, it came in at a respectable almost 4000 words, though I pity whoever has to read 'em.

The river of paying work is still coming, so this week is mostly taken care of as well. My discipline is getting a little better - last week I mostly started work around 8pm and finished after midnight, yet didn't accomplish much during the day at all. Today I finished before 5pm, phew!

I've continued to mess around with the Reaper music software, with varying success. Last night's effort wasn't helped by the fact that I put in a melody line before changing the BPM from 120 to 150, with the result that all my lines are now in sets of three bars - like a 6/8 beat but on a 4/4 grid. Nope, doesn't work at all. I'll have to redraw that song. And drawing it is - since I haven't yet figured out how to attach my keyboard, all of it is constructed by clicking in the note pane. Takes some getting used to - sure ain't like tinkling on the piano - but it does the job.

I should really set up a page somewhere for the few songs I've completed. Some of them are okay, if you ignore the propensity for whooshing sound effects and such. Might be good for a laugh, eh?

Globetrotter's Gallivants

Well, I finally did it - culled some of the best photos from my travelling years, and put them all in one place. Theoretically I'm all caught up now - except for any NZ-themed shows that might still be in the offing. Anyway, here it is - a bunch of different countries, but largely Germany, which was my home base for seven years. At the end there are links to other, shorter themed shows. Enjoy!



The soundtrack is "Stepping Stones in Time" - so appropriate for these ancient places, and also for a decade of memories - once again provided by the talented Mike Rogers, and you can find the whole album over at http://michaellrogers.virb.com/magnetica.

Bad Blogging and Good Work

Yep, there it is. I'm a bad blogger. So often I don't bother writing anything down, even though I know fine well it would make a good blog. There are reasons for this, sure - one being that I believe I only have a certain amount of inspiration for a given day and if I use it on a blog, I can't use it on fiction. This has proven true on occasion, but I surely don't write fiction every day so there are some left over for blogging.

Anyway, there is plenty going on in this little ol' corner of the world. Our new flatmate has been here just over a week and is settling in well - we're glad to have him. The cat is back to her old self after a nasty tooth extraction. I have a lot of work on this week, of the paying kind - which is nice, even if it's rather too much for my liking. It's likely to be 20 hours of work in the one week which is quite unusual for me.

Worked a bit on a short story yesterday. It is progressing, if slowly. I suspect the slowness is because it is one of my first attempts at actual fantasy (as opposed to sci-fi) - though I do have a sci-fi twist in it for sure. It's just not my first choice of genre and it's proving difficult to get into the groove.

In other writing, I suppose I should be thinking about the next episode of Comet Born, as Walt reminded me yesterday. The last one isn't published yet, but I guess that shouldn't stop me. The project continues to be an adventure in non-planning, which is a little scary for my Snowflaking self. Okay, a lot scary. But so far, very fun, and you can read all the published episodes from the Comet Born index.

Summer is coming on quite nicely indeed. If it's this hot in November, what'll it be like in February? Yesterday our church held a fun run at Takapuna beach to fundraise for the youth group. Two of the guys ran the full 10 kilometres dressed in Santa suits and beards. I got some great video of that event, so look out for that when I've put it all together.

My friend C.S. Lakin has posted a wonderful blog about writer's wordcount and why it doesn't matter. It is a refreshing view in a time when many authors are just all about the numbers. Doing a small amount of good work is just as valuable. Go read that post.

So there we go. Not such a bad show after all. I have now put the "write new blog post" page link into my Morning Coffee so perhaps I won't forget for quite so long the next time around.  :)

Influencing Authors and the tales behind them

So I was offline for nearly two whole days, enjoying my weekend, and arrive back to find myself tagged umpteen ways to Timbuktu with this author meme thing that was already floating around last week. I've read the contributions and the reasonings and the plea for elucidation rather than just spouting off names. Okay, let's do this properly.

[Fabulous place, Timbuktu, by the way. Here's a picture - that's me on the right:]

I'm going to start at the beginning and attempt to move chronologically, giving my utterly personal reasons as we go. Hmm, I wonder if it'll be what you expect...I may even surprise myself.


1. C.S. Lewis 
The Narnia books were likely the first full-length novels I read - first read aloud by parents, then by myself by the time I was six or so. These taught me the thrill of being lost inside a story and gave me the addiction to reading that I still suffer from today.

2. John White 
The Tower of Geburah, at 600 pages, was my Christmas gift right before I turned seven. I read it in three days and sorely felt the lack of further items in this category. I mean, this was the eighties after all. Mr. White was in fact a non-fiction writer, and it shows when I look at his work now, but at the time I didn't care. That book taught me that a plot can go on and on and on - for hundreds and hundreds of pages - and still be cohesive and united.

3. Enid Blyton
Don't laugh. I once owned over 40 of her novels, and spent many a summer's day devouring two or three of them back to back. Though obviously dated, they were quite exciting to a child and involved a good amount of childish derring-do - e.g. camping and travelling without adults came up quite a lot. These books taught me a large variety of different plots, as well as the varying "feelings of tension" brought on by individual villains, which were never the same twice.

4. Star Trek
I'm counting all the authors as a collective, because they all wrote in the same world...a world of a hopeful future, the thrill of exploring the vastness of space, the character and team dynamics. These things have always stayed with me. And if anyone's asking, my favourite Trek movies are 4, 5, 8, 9 and 11. :) The Trek novels are also worth a mention - some very good writers there, with bold concepts of their own even while staying within the established lore.

5. Frank Peretti
I consumed This Present Darkness as soon as it came into the house one fine day in 1987. It was a real eye-opener to what could be done with fiction, blurring the line to reality, and displaying an intricately plotted storyline that still astonishes today.

6. Stephen Lawhead
I'll never forget the day Dad brought Taliesin home from a foray to the Christian bookshop. Hullo, what's this? I thought as I discovered the second chapter was not about the same people and places as the first. But I quickly fell in love with the alternating manner of telling, which made the moment of their meeting all the more significant. I ended up writing my first full-length novel in that very method many years later.
That is only the first book of the Pendragon Cycle. I grew to love the second, Merlin, even more, followed by all the others and the supposedly unrelated modern-day "Avalon".
Then came Albion and Empyrion. I dare any warm-hearted human not to be moved by the scene in The Siege of Dome where the telepathic fish come to comfort a desperate traveller.

7. Beth W.
A homeschool friend from childhood who conspired with me to co-write a story of a local urban legend being proven. I was with her on her paper run and the front page carried a story of said legend, which got us talking. We planned out the entire story and agreed each of us would write a version, to be combined later. She didn't get terribly far with hers - but I finished mine at the respectable length of 20,000 words over several months at the age of 14. So thanks, Beth, for prodding me to do it.

(Insert long, boring years of reading mostly historical fiction. Or nothing at all. Blame university, and then living in Germany)

8. Jeremy Robinson
A champion of independent publishing! His first novel The Didymus Contingency blew me away by its concept and plotting, as well as the fact that Jeremy was the publisher. He moved from self-publishing, to his own publishing company, and eventually into traditional publishing. A success story to aspire to.

9. Frank Creed
Founder of the Lost Genre Guild, which provided the support and feedback for nearly everything I have done in serious writing and publishing to date, and a high-concept novelist of fast-moving cyberpunk - the genre I now feel most at home in. All about opening doors of possibility.

10. Randy Ingermanson
Long before I ever got hold of his novels (which isn't easy these days) I discovered his writing site and Snowflake method for novel planning. Unbeknownst to me, I had been using a similar system (though not so well defined) to plot my novels already, but he came along and made it all perfectly clear. To this day, the Snowflake (well, the bits of it that I use) is my very favouritest part of novel writing.

11. Darryl Sloan
Once a Christian, Darryl has moved away from that and now constantly questions our relationship to reality. Aside from being great fodder for sci-fi ideas, the challenge to established thought is a healthy thing.

12. Chris Walley
Who else has crafted 1000+ pages of one memorable, mind-blowing story? Chris has truly expanded the horizons of science fiction.

13. The Lost Genre Guild authors
Everyone who's stepped up to encourage in hard times, to critique a novel, to assist with critiquing and reviewing - these guys are the best. I would never have gotten this far in my writing without them.

14. Authors and associates I visited on my "roadtrip" in 08
Everyone who took me in for an hour or a day or a week while I crossed the USA by myself. Each shared their own particular authorness and insights with me, and their input is still with me today. I planned to write the roadtrip novel "Godspeed" while actually travelling - but you know how travelling is. Just as well everyone is so memorable.

15. Finally - All the authors I've published!
Seriously, these guys are da bomb. In working through manuscripts together, they've taught me so much. Each story has touched me in its own way, and each writer has left their mark on my own approach. I'm somewhat in awe to be called their publisher - I only hope to be truly worthy of that name.

A Future Visit to the Past

I'm scared stiff. Not a circumstance that happens very often, but this is one of them. You see, next week I'm about to take a trip into the milieu of my past life, reconnecting with a bunch of people I used to know from worship camps. It's a different camp (www.kiwisong.co.nz), but in the same spirit, and many of the same folks will be there. I don't particularly want to learn about worship - been there, done that, suffered the abuse - but my creative mind remembers all too well that my best writing is done in church, and what better way to give myself a jildy than to spend all week at a camp? In a lovely remote coastal location no less?

The thing I'm really scared about is that most if not all of these old friends are of the highly prophetic type. Yes, I know that's a good thing. A real good thing in fact. But that means there's a very good chance that God might speak to me. He and I have observed silence for so long that I know I'll be a little awkward, even if he isn't. He might see fit to give me clues about just what it is that is still broken inside of me after severe spiritual abuse as a worship leader. There might be tears and healing. Or there might not. I'm trying not to set any expectations, because I could be setting myself up for disappointment. Then again, I can't expect to show up in this state in such a spiritually charged atmosphere and have nothing happen.

I will be meeting some of the very people who once prophesied I would go to Germany. Now, for sure they're not responsible for the abuse that happened while I was there. Not even God is responsible for that, actually. Still, it'll be weird telling them what a disaster it turned out to be (Did you miss that story? Part 1 Part 2).

I guess I'm also scared that someone will tell me what I'm doing wrong, as many others have done over the years. Get over it, they said. You have to worship whether you feel like it or not. Well, folks, I'm sorry. My worship fuse is blown, and it's going to take more than "getting over it" to be able to even sing in church again. Sure, I've found other ways to express my joie de vivre, such as it is. But writing a story is much harder than writing a song, let me tell you.

Which brings me to a problem: all this terror is crippling my ability to write. I'm on a deadline; need to write at least one story today, and get it critiqued, edited and submitted by the end of the week. Yesterday all I did was rearrange my room and my office area. Didn't even tidy up first. With the result that the mess is just elsewhere now. Mountains of clothes by the bed. An overflowing in-tray of paperwork to file. Every seat (well, 4 out of 5) piled high with random stuff. A sink full of dishes, a stinky cat litterbox. No doubt all this mess is just an external sign of the chaos within. And I've never been able to write amidst a mess.

Each night I tell myself I won't turn on the computer in the morning until I've tidied up. But then I have to have it on to play music while I'm tidying - and the music does help my composure, thank the Lord for Mike, composer extraordinaire. So I end up checking my mail and everything anyway, and the room is not tidy, and I do not write.

Haven't had any human contact for 48 hours, except online; that's likely to change today, though I'd rather stay a hermit. Can you hear me tearing my hair out? I have a long list of stuff to finish this week, and zero ability to get started on it. Creative work requires a good frame of mind, and that I do not have right now.

So, I'm sorry about the gut-spilling here, but if you weren't put off by the title, it's your own problem, and I'd like to call you friend. Will God speak to me next week through old (or new) friends? I cannot say. All I know is that probably, nothing will be the same.