When I wrote Heavy Duty my original intention was to publish it on the web and to completely avoid the whole hard copy issue. Well, the web has finally caught up properly and Heavy Duty is now available in Kindle format on Amazon.
Sunday, May 15, 2011
Heavy Duty available in Kindle format
When I wrote Heavy Duty my original intention was to publish it on the web and to completely avoid the whole hard copy issue. Well, the web has finally caught up properly and Heavy Duty is now available in Kindle format on Amazon.
Friday, February 23, 2007
WHO WROTE HEAVY DUTY? Back story
Back in 2003 I asked Chris Struthers to write a short piece called Who is Heavy Duty? This was a method of attempting to compare his synopsis with me. However, Chris idiosyncratically wrote this piece instead and even managed to re-calculate all the dates I had removed on the advice of Systel Publishing.
In 1996, Marshall Leonid Shavyrin, involved in the Russian missile programme, is convicted of stealing weapons grade plutonium and sentenced to eight years imprisonment. Media mogul Dave Drooszhbah finds his corporation at the brink of bankruptcy. Heathcliff, who is researching Pandora with Bron Lainey at Agritechno, agrees to buy a stake in half of the company. He also invests heavily in Drooszhbah's associate Raymond Twynne's research into virtual reality. Twynne is eventually successful in creating VR.
The Allardyces have been working at using Pandora to alleviate the growing population problem. At the end of the 20th century, the first of destructive Pioneer viruses strike the human population. Dave Drooszhbah is attacked by a madman who believes he spread Pioneer through VR.
On
The Allardyce clan decide to move their entire operations to the Japanese city of
Heathcliff leaves Agritechno and wages war against his siblings and using new mutations of Pioneer on their staff.
Drooszhbah and Twynne have an argument that turns violent. Drooszhbah knocks Twynne out but Heathcliff appears and convinces Drooszhbah he killed him. Heathcliff later uses this to blackmail Drooszhbah. Twynne is, in fact still alive but he is not seen again. In 2012, Pascoe's son BeeJay stumbles across the Elephant and decides to help him out. Two years later, the Elephant manages to escape the bank vault into the VR network.
The same year, the Heavy Duty computer virus is used to infect the computer systems in
On Highway 21, a piece of Skyhook debris strikes Pride's car. He is severely wounded, his wife Sarah is vaporised and his friend Tin Han's injuries are so bad he is left in a persistent vegetative state.
At some point Lainey and the Allardyce agree that he will infiltrate Heathcliff's operations and attempt to destroy his AI.
Eighteen months later, in 2040, Bron contacts Pride who is living in Bakoue coming to terms with his loss and asks him to help him find out who was responsible for the Heavy Duty virus. Pride agrees.
Nine months after that, Marie Allardyce, pregnant with the seventh cloned ovum, is kidnapped by Heathcliff.
In 2041, three months after Marie's disappearance, Heathcliff kidnaps Lainey who has managed to destroy his AI, and Alicia and his plan to sterilise the entire population and recover the Pandora object unfolds...
Thursday, January 06, 2005
Chapter Three
Chapter three was originally a flashback sequence nearer the middle of the book, but then I realised that it was interfering with the tempo of the story and firstly I wrote it as a complete chapter of flashback - still in the same place.
But this didn't work and eventually I had to decide to put the Boukae Chapter near the begining and I was then forced to eliminate all flashbacks and set out the chapters in chronological order, not an easy task if you also consider how many times I had been advised to remove dates from the novel.
So it became clear that the opening chapters of the novel were setting up the background of most of the important characters and I then needed a new chapter explaining Alicia's background (she is know by the pet name Leesh)
However all that was to come- Chapter three opens with Pride hiding out in a ruined villa in Boukae after the Skyhook disaster (you don't know this yet though) and still suffering from the injuries he sustained then. Boukae is on the edges of a whole section of Africa caught in a long term war between a number of factions and Pride's tiny community of children and servants are threatened by a crazed soldier. Pride is forced by circumstances to do something about it, he has to care and just as he makes this important change - Bron Lainey appears to take him back to civilisation.
But this didn't work and eventually I had to decide to put the Boukae Chapter near the begining and I was then forced to eliminate all flashbacks and set out the chapters in chronological order, not an easy task if you also consider how many times I had been advised to remove dates from the novel.
So it became clear that the opening chapters of the novel were setting up the background of most of the important characters and I then needed a new chapter explaining Alicia's background (she is know by the pet name Leesh)
However all that was to come- Chapter three opens with Pride hiding out in a ruined villa in Boukae after the Skyhook disaster (you don't know this yet though) and still suffering from the injuries he sustained then. Boukae is on the edges of a whole section of Africa caught in a long term war between a number of factions and Pride's tiny community of children and servants are threatened by a crazed soldier. Pride is forced by circumstances to do something about it, he has to care and just as he makes this important change - Bron Lainey appears to take him back to civilisation.
Monday, January 03, 2005
Chapter Two
In chapter two I have Kimberley Blaimes Allardyce turn up at New Puritan coroporations secret Tokomak in Boukae which has been contaminated with a bio weapon and all the staff are dead. Apart from two security men - Dickson and Cox. These two characters appear much later in the novel as the names on two spacesuits. Dickson and Cox have recovered a breifcase from the Tokamak and Kimberely leaves with this.
It's a short chapter and it has to establish Kimberely with the breifcase.
It's a short chapter and it has to establish Kimberely with the breifcase.
Sunday, January 02, 2005
Prologue
Eventually I decided not to open with Pride waking up, although someone still wakes up in the Prologue, it is the AI known as The Elephant who does the waking (okay - he was never really asleep, just trapped.) I had also decided that I wanted the novel to begin with the first word of the title and to end with the last word - so that he whole adventure was contained within the collapsed Heavy Duty - in a way I was suggesting the internal world that half the adventure takes place. Of course the Kantian question which all Science Fiction appears to pose remains the same. How real is all of this? Later on Hari mentions to Pride that The Nothing (Hari's name for the real world) only exists in the mind of God.
So here it is: Heavy Duty opens with phone Engineer Taro Anzai accidentally reconnecting The Elephant to the telephone network. Taro Anzai may be a minor Character but he actually opens the second book of the Trilogy and if he lives long enough he may open the third book.
Further out, beyond the sunrise, there was a young volcano, where the island of Kozu shima used to be. About one hundred kilometres further out and half a kilometre down was the drowned city of Tokyo. He looked too long at that spot and a cold tide of memory flooded his soul.
So here it is: Heavy Duty opens with phone Engineer Taro Anzai accidentally reconnecting The Elephant to the telephone network. Taro Anzai may be a minor Character but he actually opens the second book of the Trilogy and if he lives long enough he may open the third book.
EXTRACT FROM THE PROLOGUE
Heavy rain spattered the windscreen as Mr Taro Anzai parked the phone company truck next to the big memorial bell.
He was in the centre of the wide concourse at the point where the Kiryu Highway abruptly terminated. The sun was still low on the horizon and the dawn was washed in sickly orange. He waited until the rain had stopped. It was another cold bleary morning in the bay area, much wetter and colder than the mornings he remembered as a child.Further out, beyond the sunrise, there was a young volcano, where the island of Kozu shima used to be. About one hundred kilometres further out and half a kilometre down was the drowned city of Tokyo. He looked too long at that spot and a cold tide of memory flooded his soul.
Saturday, January 01, 2005
The Basic Story Concept
Well the story started to develop quite quickly after that. My intention was to fill the story with lots of set dressing and as many samples as I could. A sample is where I take a scene from a famous movie, novel, TV show or possibly even a song and then weave that into the plot. Nothing would be sacred and everything would have to be done on as grand a scale as possible. What I wanted to read was a detective story that I wouldn't be able to guess the ending.
One year after I finished Heavy Duty a publisher was interested in it. They kept it for a year and kept me going right up to the details for the cover blurb.
And then they cancelled.
I am going to call this company Systel Publishing after the name of one of the companies in Heavy Duty, so that I don't keep having to say "a publisher I don't want to name" all the time. I am not unhappy with them. Business is business.
The story as brief as I can make it. Cameron Pride becomes entangled in a web of intrigue involving three super corporations a reclusive wealthy family, the Police and Heathcliff. For some reason he can't understand, everyone thinks he knows where Bron Lainey has disappeared to and they want to be there when he finds him. What he eventually discovers is that an AI computer has predicted that he will find Lainey.
Everyone wants to find Lainey because they believe Lainey will lead them to a missing alien artefact known as the Pandora Object. The Pandora Object is an immense alien library of science and technology. Caught up in this intrigue and helping Pride on his way are: The Huf Puf Tribe - a group of virtual Native Americans who control small robot beetles, The House Gangs of the Hack, Parcho his friend, Princess Alison and the Furries of CraySevenLand.
Not helping him is Major Violet Jones special anti-terrorist officer, The Merryweathers - a bunch of eco-terrorists, Heathcliff - the most evil man in the world. Mercedes Allardyce who threatens to expose him if he doesn't find her sister Marie and Dave Drooszhbah's Media Corporation which broadcast a news feature accusing him of being Heavy Duty, the mysterious virus writer who brought down a SkyHook Space Liner causing hundreds of deaths.
And if that wasn't bad enough. There is BJ and his kid sister Biscuits who always manage to screw up whatever he is doing. Then there is The Elephant, the AI released from captivity by Taro Ansi the Japanese telephone engineer and last but not least - Bron Lainey.
You can see why it is a Manga Novel. And why it needs a blog to explain it.
Question number one. Who or what is Heavy Duty? I decided not to tell even Fraser. I haven't told anyone yet because you don't find that out until the last book in the trilogy. Or do you?
Question number two. Who is Heathcliff and what is he up to?
Clearly revealed by reading.
Question number three. Why do the satellites cameras fail to show certain areas of the Earth at certain times?
This question fairly obsessed Systel Publishing who had Heavy Duty for a year. The answer isn't too difficult if you think about, as Lisa Simpson would say. The idea was not to reveal the stuff about the satellite until, well the second book. An most of the people who read Heavy Duty actually never ever mentioned question three. They just wanted to know who is Heavy Duty.
So who is Heavy Duty?
I once asked Chris if he could write a synopsis of Heavy Duty - I wanted to compare my idea of a synopsis to his and he ended up writing a mini-feature called Who Wrote Heavy Duty which contained all the back story and identified all the dates that were removed from the original on the instructions of the publisher. (Just a round about way of trying to get me to spill the beans.)
This date removal was also suggested by a number of agents who rejected it but offered that helpful advice. (One agent wrote to say that Heavy Duty wasn't there cup of tea. So I sent him a Tea Bag with the suggestion that it might be! On reflection, rather unfair - but an irresistible temptation.)
There are lots of other interested mentions and mysteries, I think Fraser's favourite future thing was a packet of marijauna cigarettes with the brand name Thai Sticks which were grown in France and didn't actually produce smoke, an idea that Phillip Morris spent millions trying to develop - the smokeless cigarette that is, not the wacky backy part!
One year after I finished Heavy Duty a publisher was interested in it. They kept it for a year and kept me going right up to the details for the cover blurb.
And then they cancelled.
I am going to call this company Systel Publishing after the name of one of the companies in Heavy Duty, so that I don't keep having to say "a publisher I don't want to name" all the time. I am not unhappy with them. Business is business.
The story as brief as I can make it. Cameron Pride becomes entangled in a web of intrigue involving three super corporations a reclusive wealthy family, the Police and Heathcliff. For some reason he can't understand, everyone thinks he knows where Bron Lainey has disappeared to and they want to be there when he finds him. What he eventually discovers is that an AI computer has predicted that he will find Lainey.
Everyone wants to find Lainey because they believe Lainey will lead them to a missing alien artefact known as the Pandora Object. The Pandora Object is an immense alien library of science and technology. Caught up in this intrigue and helping Pride on his way are: The Huf Puf Tribe - a group of virtual Native Americans who control small robot beetles, The House Gangs of the Hack, Parcho his friend, Princess Alison and the Furries of CraySevenLand.
Not helping him is Major Violet Jones special anti-terrorist officer, The Merryweathers - a bunch of eco-terrorists, Heathcliff - the most evil man in the world. Mercedes Allardyce who threatens to expose him if he doesn't find her sister Marie and Dave Drooszhbah's Media Corporation which broadcast a news feature accusing him of being Heavy Duty, the mysterious virus writer who brought down a SkyHook Space Liner causing hundreds of deaths.
And if that wasn't bad enough. There is BJ and his kid sister Biscuits who always manage to screw up whatever he is doing. Then there is The Elephant, the AI released from captivity by Taro Ansi the Japanese telephone engineer and last but not least - Bron Lainey.
You can see why it is a Manga Novel. And why it needs a blog to explain it.
Question number one. Who or what is Heavy Duty? I decided not to tell even Fraser. I haven't told anyone yet because you don't find that out until the last book in the trilogy. Or do you?
Question number two. Who is Heathcliff and what is he up to?
Clearly revealed by reading.
Question number three. Why do the satellites cameras fail to show certain areas of the Earth at certain times?
This question fairly obsessed Systel Publishing who had Heavy Duty for a year. The answer isn't too difficult if you think about, as Lisa Simpson would say. The idea was not to reveal the stuff about the satellite until, well the second book. An most of the people who read Heavy Duty actually never ever mentioned question three. They just wanted to know who is Heavy Duty.
So who is Heavy Duty?
I once asked Chris if he could write a synopsis of Heavy Duty - I wanted to compare my idea of a synopsis to his and he ended up writing a mini-feature called Who Wrote Heavy Duty which contained all the back story and identified all the dates that were removed from the original on the instructions of the publisher. (Just a round about way of trying to get me to spill the beans.)
This date removal was also suggested by a number of agents who rejected it but offered that helpful advice. (One agent wrote to say that Heavy Duty wasn't there cup of tea. So I sent him a Tea Bag with the suggestion that it might be! On reflection, rather unfair - but an irresistible temptation.)
There are lots of other interested mentions and mysteries, I think Fraser's favourite future thing was a packet of marijauna cigarettes with the brand name Thai Sticks which were grown in France and didn't actually produce smoke, an idea that Phillip Morris spent millions trying to develop - the smokeless cigarette that is, not the wacky backy part!
Building VR world
So the idea started to grow in my mind and as all writers know it begins to take you over, constantly filling your mind with scenarios and tiny snippets of dialogue.
"What would happen," Fraser asked, talking in general about VR, "if you woke up in Virtual Reality. Say you fell asleep or it you were still connected to it. How would you know it wasn't real?"
"What if you had taken so many drugs the night before, or you were really drunk and didn't remember connected yourself to the VR," I said expanding the idea.
"Well wouldn't you just disconnect yourself in your sleep, when you turned over and anyway where do the wires go? Are they stuck in your brain or what?"
Clearly a plot problem had already arisen.
"No, there can't be any wires at all, they must be something simple like a pair of sunglasses and they link to really small hand held computers made by Toshiba and they are called Toshes, and they are phones and credit cards and money all in one."
(The present Toshiba wasn'€™t available then and it doesn'€™t yet connect you to the virtual reality world. But I would still like one! And it really wasn'€™t that hard to predict since time was on my side.)
So Chapter one originally began with our hero, Cameron Pride, waking up in the middle of the Dave Drooszhbah's hugely successful virtual reality chat show - although he had really woken up in Bron Lainey's apartment and the thing was, there was a dead body in the room. And the police are on the way. The dead woman is Lyn Yin Bron Lainey's girlfriend and Lainey isn't there.
However waking your main character up anywhere doesn't work for the opening of a novel unless he woke up dead floating face down in a swimming pool on Sunset Boulevard - nope already been done. So although in the first draft Pride does wake up in the apartment and has to escape from the police, in the final draft, that chapter is moved to about number 6 and some preceding chapters fill in some of Pride's background and some stuff about the war amongst the Allardyces and Lt Schumacher trying to find out what is wrong with one of his satellite imaging
systems.
One of the minor problems is that all your characters should have a connection with each other and at some point meet, but I was saving Schumacher for the next book by this time called the rather original Heavy Duty Two.
But more of that later - of course it doesn't help now that a certain publishing person lost the first five chapters of HD2 in a taxi somewhere in Glasgow nor that the hard drive containing just those same chapters was later fried. Also included in that lost envelope was an additional chapter of Pride when he left his first wife the ruthless CEO of Utah Konica and owner and manufacturer of the greatest quantum computer ever made - The Cray Seven
"What would happen," Fraser asked, talking in general about VR, "if you woke up in Virtual Reality. Say you fell asleep or it you were still connected to it. How would you know it wasn't real?"
"What if you had taken so many drugs the night before, or you were really drunk and didn't remember connected yourself to the VR," I said expanding the idea.
"Well wouldn't you just disconnect yourself in your sleep, when you turned over and anyway where do the wires go? Are they stuck in your brain or what?"
Clearly a plot problem had already arisen.
"No, there can't be any wires at all, they must be something simple like a pair of sunglasses and they link to really small hand held computers made by Toshiba and they are called Toshes, and they are phones and credit cards and money all in one."
(The present Toshiba wasn'€™t available then and it doesn'€™t yet connect you to the virtual reality world. But I would still like one! And it really wasn'€™t that hard to predict since time was on my side.)
So Chapter one originally began with our hero, Cameron Pride, waking up in the middle of the Dave Drooszhbah's hugely successful virtual reality chat show - although he had really woken up in Bron Lainey's apartment and the thing was, there was a dead body in the room. And the police are on the way. The dead woman is Lyn Yin Bron Lainey's girlfriend and Lainey isn't there.
However waking your main character up anywhere doesn't work for the opening of a novel unless he woke up dead floating face down in a swimming pool on Sunset Boulevard - nope already been done. So although in the first draft Pride does wake up in the apartment and has to escape from the police, in the final draft, that chapter is moved to about number 6 and some preceding chapters fill in some of Pride's background and some stuff about the war amongst the Allardyces and Lt Schumacher trying to find out what is wrong with one of his satellite imaging
systems.
One of the minor problems is that all your characters should have a connection with each other and at some point meet, but I was saving Schumacher for the next book by this time called the rather original Heavy Duty Two.
But more of that later - of course it doesn't help now that a certain publishing person lost the first five chapters of HD2 in a taxi somewhere in Glasgow nor that the hard drive containing just those same chapters was later fried. Also included in that lost envelope was an additional chapter of Pride when he left his first wife the ruthless CEO of Utah Konica and owner and manufacturer of the greatest quantum computer ever made - The Cray Seven
Heavy Duty - Chapter One
"And you know what?" I said, but Fraser, good listener that he is knew that it was a rhetorical question intended to help structure my delivery. "You know what, it should have some sort of news bulletin at the start of each chapter to set the scene or some kind of quote from someone really clever but weird... It should be something by...,"
Fraser looked wondering if I was still going rhetorical.
"It should be something by Immanuel Kant!" I said filled with the joy of a great explorer at the door of a tomb filled with treasure.
Fraser looked wondering if I was still going rhetorical.
"It should be something by Immanuel Kant!" I said filled with the joy of a great explorer at the door of a tomb filled with treasure.
Heavy Duty - A Manga Novel
A long time ago, Fraser and I were sitting in the Bistro, uncharacteristically drinking and we were talking about disgusting things. "Wouldn't it be really awful if you were giving someone mouth to mouth resucitation and they puked in your mouth?" said Fraser registering his disgust with a sudden grimace.
"That's heavy duty," I said sharing his disgust but not allowing the emotion to reflect in my face.
....and I got to thinking, wouldn't it be a great scene in a movie, but it would have to be a Manga movie... and then I thought wouldn't it be a great idea to write a book in the style of a Manga Movie - it would be the world's first Manga Novel and it would be called:
"That's heavy duty," I said sharing his disgust but not allowing the emotion to reflect in my face.
....and I got to thinking, wouldn't it be a great scene in a movie, but it would have to be a Manga movie... and then I thought wouldn't it be a great idea to write a book in the style of a Manga Movie - it would be the world's first Manga Novel and it would be called:
HEAVY DUTY
The main characters would be:
Cameron Pride
Violet
Parcho
the reclusive and immensely no hang on, obscenely wealthy Allardyce family
The entire Huf -Puf Tribe
Dave Droosbah the multi media host of the most succesful Virtual Reality show
"Sounds great!" said Fraser.
We could have giant spaceships, incredible biological experiments, really weird stuff about aliens
and of course we would need a mad robot- no better still a super intelligent computer whose program was sent to earth millions of years ago by well, I guess super-intellegent aliens.
So that was another Character and he was called:
The Elephant.
Oh and wait a minute - there would have to be a little genius kid like a funnier version of one of those kids in the Midwich Cuckoos (you know - Village of the Damned) he would have two names, no he would have two initials and his mother would be a drunk, no instead she would be sad 'cos she had lost out in love - twice. BJ could have a little sister called biscuits who he would do stuff to protect her and get money and he would build a giant super computer in his bed room
"What was the kids name?" asked Fraser.
"Biscuits."
"No," he said looking irritated, "the other one, Biscuits is quite a good name."
"He's called BJ and he's got loads of Degrees from all the university course he has done - in his spare time and he's only 12 years old"
"So he's called BJ,"said Fraser deliberately interrupting my stream of consciousness babble. "so that stands for ... Blow Job!" Fraser reeled back and looked like a German Shepherd dog as he laughed at his own joke.
"And you know what," I continued, simply ignoring him "we'll publish it on the internet..."
Cameron Pride
Violet
Parcho
the reclusive and immensely no hang on, obscenely wealthy Allardyce family
The entire Huf -Puf Tribe
Dave Droosbah the multi media host of the most succesful Virtual Reality show
"Sounds great!" said Fraser.
We could have giant spaceships, incredible biological experiments, really weird stuff about aliens
and of course we would need a mad robot- no better still a super intelligent computer whose program was sent to earth millions of years ago by well, I guess super-intellegent aliens.
So that was another Character and he was called:
The Elephant.
Oh and wait a minute - there would have to be a little genius kid like a funnier version of one of those kids in the Midwich Cuckoos (you know - Village of the Damned) he would have two names, no he would have two initials and his mother would be a drunk, no instead she would be sad 'cos she had lost out in love - twice. BJ could have a little sister called biscuits who he would do stuff to protect her and get money and he would build a giant super computer in his bed room
"What was the kids name?" asked Fraser.
"Biscuits."
"No," he said looking irritated, "the other one, Biscuits is quite a good name."
"He's called BJ and he's got loads of Degrees from all the university course he has done - in his spare time and he's only 12 years old"
"So he's called BJ,"said Fraser deliberately interrupting my stream of consciousness babble. "so that stands for ... Blow Job!" Fraser reeled back and looked like a German Shepherd dog as he laughed at his own joke.
"And you know what," I continued, simply ignoring him "we'll publish it on the internet..."
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