One week to go!
- At June 29, 2017
- By Niel
- In Events/News, Writing
0
Yes, it’s almost here. Altitude comes out next Thursday the 6th of July. Right now you can get 25% off until publication day, so do jump in now and save on the launch day price. Don’t miss out.
Buy Altitude ebook edition now!
And if you’re a paperback person you can buy Altitude in physical form right now from your favourite online or physical bookshop!
Want to read the first three chapters for free? Click here for a PDF version. Or click here for other options.
13 months
- At June 28, 2017
- By Niel
- In Writing
0
Yesterday I completed my final edit of Altitude. I made my last few small changes and stepped away from the book, declaring it finished. This is always a bittersweet moment for any author, it’s exciting to finally finish your novel, to put it to bed and move on to the next project, but it’s also a sad moment when you walk away from the playground that has been your metal home for an age. You cheer at your achievement, but you worry that it’s no good, that you could make it better, that you should give it just one more read through…
There’s that famous saying by Leonardo da Vinci: “Art is never finished, only abandoned.” It’s so true. We’re never fully happy with our work, we just run out of time, or enthusiasm and step away. Or we tinker until the project rots.
Looking back over Altitude I realised that, even though it feels like I’ve been working on it for ages, it’s been just over a year from start to finish: 13 months, give or take a week. The idea dates further back, maybe another year, but I started jotting down my initial ideas in June 2016. That first file contains a rough synopsis, which I’m surprised to discover is very close to the finished book. I wrote the first draft over the summer, finishing it in mid September 2016. The rest of the time between now and then has been taken up with editing and re-writes, although I’ve also been working on other projects at the same time.
Now the book is done and out of my hands, ready for readers to discover in just over a week’s time. It’s the fastest project I’ve done so far, and that’s probably because it’s my first venture into self-publishing. I’ve not turned my back on traditional publishing, I just wanted to give this a go. The faster timeline is very appealing. Sorrowline took three and a half years from that first page to publication. Timesmith was about the same. It’s a long time to live with a project. 13 months is like travelling at light-speed in comparison! I like the challenge of the quick turn-around. The question is, can I do it faster? It seems the key to a prosperous career as a novelist is productivity – the reader wants the next book NOW, not in a year’s time. So, I’m about to start on my next project and see if I can get it out there this side of Christmas. Watch this space…
The Secret Star Trek Universe
- At June 23, 2017
- By Niel
- In General, Opinion
0
Be warned: turn back now if you’re not a Star Trek fan.
The Problem with Star Trek
I love Star Trek. I love it all (in varying degrees). Always have, probably always will. My go-to incarnation is The Next Generation, but I can appreciate it all for different reasons. The adventure of the classic series, the thoughtfulness of The Next Generation, the complexity of Deep Space 9, the fun of Voyager, the mixed bag of the movies, the colour of the animated show, the earnestness of Enterprise, the lot!
It used to be easy to enjoy Star Trek. There was The Original Series (TOS), then TNG, then DS9 and Voyager. All nice and linear, from A to B to C to 1701D. But things aren’t so simple any more.
Prequels and Reboots
It started to get complicated with Star Trek Enterprise, a prequel series set a century before the original series. Warp flight was still a novelty, transporters were a dangerous piece of kit, and we’d never met a Klingon. Enterprise isn’t my favourite show, but there’s still much to like here. But there’s also a lot that doesn’t quite fit with what we know lies ahead with TOS. The design, the look and feel of the ship, the costumes all suggest a slightly more sophisticated and advanced culture than the one we know and love from TOS, and there’s a very good reason for this: Star Trek isn’t real! It’s a TV show designed and filmed in the 1960s onwards. Enterprise was made for a millennial audience, it had to evolve, it had to be modern. It couldn’t have had retro sixties futurism, could it? Maybe, but that’s an argument for another day. The reason Enterprise doesn’t look like a real-life precursor to TOS is because it’s not real life. (By the way I love the NX-01 ship, it’s a great design with fantastic attention to detail, but it never felt like a predecessor to the original Enterprise to me.)
Now we have a new series about to hit our screens: Star Trek Discovery, set just ten years before TOS.
Another prequel that doesn’t seem to fit with the design of TOS – because Star Trek isn’t real.
But what if Star Trek was real? Is it possible to reconcile these differences inside the bubble of the show’s reality? Well, yes, I think it is, and we only have to look at the reboot movies to show us how.
The Kelvin Universe
When JJ Abrams re-booted Star Trek for the big screen he used time travel as a way to protect the original established chronology while also being able to start again. He didn’t want to rub out everything that had gone before and paint over it with his own version. So we got two universes: the Prime Universe and the Kelvin Universe. Everything before the 2009 reboot was in the Prime universe, including Enterprise and the new show, Discovery. The three movies existed in the alternate Kelvin Universe. JJ established that messing about with time travel and tampering with established events creates a new alternate universe where things can play out in their own way… Well, that’s not the first time that’s happened.
A Third Way?
Remember Star Trek: First Contact? The Borg travel back in time to assimilate the Earth. The Enterprise E travels back as well, averts disaster, defeats the Borg, but tampers with established events and leaves behind crucial advanced technology in the past. What if this temporal incursion created the same split that we see happening with the creation of the Kelvin Universe. There’s evidence to back this up: in the Prime Universe we knew nothing of the Borg until Q introduced us to them in the 24th Century. Now, after defeating the Borg in the past we have dead drones left in the debris of a destroyed Borg sphere in the Arctic ice.
Fragments of 24th century technology have been discovered in the 22nd century. Could this change the flow of events? Could this spawn a new universe with distinctive differences to the Prime Universe? I believe so, and I’d call it…
The Phoenix Universe
Here’s my theory: the Phoenix Universe came into existence when the Borg travelled back in time to try to assimilate the Earth, as seen in Star Trek: First Contact. This temporal incursion and subsequent tampering with the course of established events created a divergent timeline – named after the Phoenix ship seen in the movie. This is a universe where Borg debris litters parts of the Earth, where we have access to Borg corpses and their implants, where the details of the first warp flight and first contact with the Vulcans played out differently to those established in the Prime Universe. This is a universe where aesthetics and technology differ to those we’ve seen in the classic series. This means that ALL of Enterprise takes place in the Phoenix Universe. This explains why it doesn’t quite match up with the Prime Universe we saw in TOS. All of Discovery will presumably take place in the Phoenix Universe as well, but it’s hard to be sure until we see it. I created this graphic to help explain my theory.
Do we need a Third Universe?
A third universe? Isn’t two enough? Doesn’t this make things even more complicated? Yes, but it also means I can love Enterprise and Discovery a little bit more because they don’t inflict a new ideology onto the classic Prime Universe shows of TOS, TNG, DS9 and Voyager – they remain intact. And it gives potential scope for exploring other parts of the Phoenix Universe. We get a whole new universe to explore.
Other Universes
Of course this is just my theory, and it’s not like we haven’t seen time travel and alternate universes before in Star Trek. There could be dozen or even hundreds of universes if we apply this logic to every single time travel adventure. But I think there’s a strong argument for the Phoenix Universe over other potential candidates; it ticks a lot of boxes, it irons out some inconsistencies and (I believe) it can increase our enjoyment of the prequel shows, letting them stretch their legs without fear of stepping on other beloved shows.
What do you think? Does the Phoenix Universe exist? Or should I turn off the TV and get out more?
Altitude – the first three chapters
- At June 16, 2017
- By Niel
- In Events/News, Writing
0
Publication day is getting closer and closer, I can almost see it now!
On July 6th Altitude will be published as both a paperback and ebook edition. But you can read the first three chapters right now, completely free! all you have to do is sign up to my email newsletter and you’ll get immediate access to the start of the story.
Go on, you know you want to, just click the link: https://www.instafreebie.com/free/buz7V