Virtual Reality – Prelude
Jun 29 '04 (Updated Oct 03 '05)
The Bottom Line My decade-old novella LIVES!!! - but you can help me make it better...
Virtual Reality – Prelude
Some of my regular readers (there’s no point denying it now – I know who you are!) may remember that I said I’d written a novella some years ago (actually, mostly 10 years ago) and had lost it forever. Well, a few days ago I found to my astonishment that I did indeed still have a recoverable file lurking around my hard drive! (All rejoice…)
However upon reading it today I find myself unimpressed with my former efforts, so I am planning to do something similar to what Terry Pratchett did with The Carpet People and re-edit it, and then seek a publisher fro the refined product. (Naturally I am under several major disadvantages to TP – his book that he’d written at 17 was already published, he was a famous author by the time he edited it, he has more writing talent in his little finger than I have in my whole body, etc… I could go on, but it would just depress me…) But still, I wish to attempt a re-write, and then try to find a publisher. (I keep having ideas for novels but rarely get beyond the first paragraph… maybe with this one I can expand on what’s already there, and that won’t fell like writing a novel…)
Looking at my own work with honest criticism, I can see many major failings in the work. The plot often stretches plausibility, the characters are extremely thinly drawn (and appear to have no families…), the prose is often naïve and sometimes banal, the technology mentioned as super-high-tech sounds way out of date (but it was written a decade ago!!). However, the basic plot has some merit – in fact, I feel that with the proper development, I could make a really good novel out of it. I already have some ideas about what I want to improve / change / delete / add, but I’m going to post it in order to get a little feedback and hopefully get some ideas that may not have occurred to me otherwise. Whether you want to spend the time reading / rating / commenting is of course entirely up to you – I will appreciate any ideas anyone gives me.
Just one final point… I began writing this purely as I enjoyed writing. It was only when a few other people saw it and liked it that I gave any consideration to trying to get published. Since then I’ve had well over fifty stories and poems published in small press magazines and anthologies, and have won a couple of competitions. I haven’t been trying to get published “properly” – that is, getting paid for it - for over five years now. This novel is the project I need to get me started at least making the attempt again.
If I ever do get it properly published, I won’t forget anyone who helps out with some constructive criticism or ideas – I’m not promising anything, but at least I should be able to get free (or, at the very least, discounted) copies of the book for people. (NB – I don’t need you to tell me about bad grammar, poor sentence construction, etc – I’ll see those quickly enough myself! – but serious / niggling plot flaws, technical inaccuracies, etc, I would like to be notified of.)
There’s 9 chapters in all, and the whole story comes to just under 30,000 words – so the chapters are generally quite long. Sorry about the long reads on your monitor if you do read them… I did consider splitting the chapters up for posting them, but they are more-or-less complete in themselves, so I didn’t feel that would work very well. I’m going to post one today and then one approximately every week / fortnight, depending on how quickly I manage to edit it to a stage I’m fairly happy with.
If you do take the time to read it, I will really appreciate it. (But if you don’t, I won’t hold any grudge against you! :-P) If you know of anyone else who likes techno-thriller / espionage fiction, I would be very happy if you sent them the link to this page (and if they’re not a member, I’d be delighted to receive feedback by email).
Oh, and if you know any Chief Executives / Managing Directors of major publishing houses that are open to bribery / corruption / blackmail / etc… ;-D
CaptainD
Chapters:
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
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