Emblem Divide – Free serialised book for charity

I had my ending in sight, I even had my ending scene and as time drew closer I had also picked out the ending phrase. It was the middle which took the time, a winding journey, covering the themes and subjects that I had plucked for inclusion. Personally I think the characters work in their settings, though they are often spontaneous, I don’t think any of them act in a way which is too out of character. By this I don’t mean in the literal sense, acting out of character is a great mechanism to add suspense and progress a story, I mean more that they don’t act in a way which is entirely unbelievable.

As I was writing I was, during my daily walk to work, constantly quizzing myself, almost as if I was being interviewed about the book. Talking about the characters; Why they were a certain way, Why they acted like they did. It helped me focus and analyse the writing which I had been doing in the previous few days. The more I analysed, the more I realised that I didn’t have to change or add much. I could quite easily draw out the topics and themes I wanted, it just allowed me to concentrate on pushing those aspects I had discovered further in the coming days.

I would often rehearse important dialogue moments, actually speaking out the lines, (people must have thought I was crazy), but it really helped me decide what I was trying to get out of the conversation. Writing is, often emotionless, and though that sounds weird, it’s true. Think about instant messaging, or texting, you can write something, but mean something completely different, and so it was very important to me that the dialogue actually made sense and portrayed the emotions and feelings that I so desperately wanted.

In the end I find it quite difficult when people ask me what the book is about, and even what genre it sits in. I am not even attempting so sound superior with that comment, insinuating that I have somehow come up with some magical fusion of genres that has never before been seen on the bookshelf. Far from it. In fact I would go as far to say I am too close to the book to actually be able to answer properly. Having said this, even Lisa found it difficult to fully classify it, preferring to use words like, Sci-fi-thriller-romance, because in all honesty, it has a little bit of all three in it.

When writing Emblem Divide initially, I had no feelings of themes or topics that I would cover. As most of you know now there is time travel involved in the book, or should I say temporal weapons. This obviously leads to the subject of consequence, of the butterfly effect, of the shear impact that one simple decision can have on your life and the lives of those around you. Consider various events in history and how the world would be a different place if that invention hadn’t been invented or that event hadn’t taken place. Many people brush this aside with, “Well if it wasn’t invented by X, it would have been invented by another,” or “It was bound to happen sooner or later.” This is all well and good, but what if you had knowledge of the future, what if you could change it? Would you?

The book focuses heavily on the emotions and relationships of several key people. I toyed with the idea of adding more characters several times, but wanted to keep the book simple enough in one respect, that you could follow the emotions and feelings as the story progressed. Some books and stories benefit heavily from having many characters. Personally I enjoy series like LOST or Prison Break where you are able to really get to know characters and their back stories. It’s these back stories that make watching their decisions and journeys all the more interesting. Moments of tense decision can be made all the more exhilarating by knowing something about a character that other people in the fictional vicinity don’t. “Press the damn button, what are you waiting for!!!” “There’s something I didn’t tell you……”

If I had to mention in singular words the themes of the book, I would cite; Power, Control, Love, Choice, Devotion, Rebellion. These all play an important role in the story, but until I began writing again in 2009 hadn’t figured into my thoughts once. The early book was simply setting the stage for the real story. When you look at the ratio it’s not that hard to believe at a little under 18% of the book the early 2003 work was almost just an introduction, which thankfully wasn’t required to change much, if at all to fit the rest of the story as it unfolded.

More in Part 2