After
almost 3 years of writing and refining…and procrastinating, my first novel, The Spirit Broker is almost ready for public consumption. Writing it took about a
year (2011-2012) and the rest of the time has been proof reading it, and
allowing a few close friends to also read it and give feedback.
I doubt
it's perfect, nothing really is. But I’m pretty much done with it. The front
cover art was completed by Ricardo Sandoval, a Grade-A dude I got hold of via his
DeviantArt website. Ricardo was a legend to work with, and he totally
understood the image I was looking for, and managed to turn something out in a
matter of weeks.
I’m about a
third of the way through the Spirit Broker in its final read, and I should have
all editing done by Christmas.
I thought I’d
continue my “short stories explained” series, and resume with one of my
favorites, Necroleptic.
This is a
short story that I could make into a longer tale, but I think it sits fine as
it is. I wrote Necroleptic over the space of 3 weeks, and it all stemmed from
another “what if” scenario, i.e. what if instead of a person falling asleep randomly (narcoleptic), they sporadically
kept on dying instead?
I wanted to make this scenario different to say the one portrayed in the 1990 movie Flatliners, where Kiefer Sutherland, Kevin Bacon and Julia Roberts play medical students who willingly “flatline” themselves in
order to enter an afterlife/purgatory state. I wanted it to be
clear that the main character's death state in Necroleptic was virtually indescribable,
as there is nothing tangible in which to relate the "afterlife" to the real world.
So, there would be no long-deceased relatives, pets, or scary things. Just a completely
different experience to anything in this physical world.
If you haven’t read it yet, but you’re reading this…well, please read it! :)
