Greg Byrne is joining us today with his novel Nine Planets. Here’s the publisher’s description.
In the world of despair, Father Nick’s Day is the only hope…
Peter Blackwell wakes from a coma into a world he doesn’t recognize. Without memory or identity, all he has are nine random images. Nine planets. Eight he can see, although he does not understand them, but the impenetrable ninth is the secret that two opposing and hidden brotherhoods have been seeking for nearly two millennia. Pursued, betrayed, Blackwell has twelve days to unlock his Ninth Planet and prevent terminal worldwide suicide. And his only ally is a manic assassin sent to extract the secret and kill him.
What’s Greg’s favorite bit?
GREG BYRNE
My favourite bit about Nine Planets would have to be the inspiration. At the time that it happened, I was deep into book three (still untitled) of a high fantasy tetralogy that had consumed me for many years. I loved this thing, dreamed about it, pondered it as I took the dog for a walk, spent hours and days working out plot problems and character arcs. It not only consumed me; it was me. My DNA was engraved into every word. At the time, I was completely happy with my writing life and not even considering a new path.
But then Nine Planets ambushed me and, believe me, it was a head-on, take no prisoners, full body armour ambush. You don’t escape unchanged from such things. I never saw it coming but, when it did and in the most incandescent ten minutes of my writing life, it changed me completely, immediately and wonderfully. I abandoned Untitled on the spot and have never gone back.
Nine Planets was miraculous in its inspiration. It was the stuff of fireworks and every writerly cliche you can imagine. It was all of those but better. I can tell you the exact time and place that the novel tumbled into my head, almost fully formed, with a bunch of plot elements I would never have thought of otherwise.
Here’s how. I was teaching English as a Second Language to a group of overseas adults in a Perth ESL school in mid December a few years ago. We were finishing a class with a discussion about Christmas and the way different countries view it, and a Korean man said this, “Santa can’t possibly deliver all the presents the night before Christmas, so he hires a network of retired postmen to help him.” Possibly this man had carried that thought around with him for many years. Possibly he had explained Christmas this way to his own kids. Perhaps he just meant it as a joke. He certainly had no idea the effect it would have on me. I never asked. I only remember the sudden brightness in my mind, the wonderful bursting of images, story ideas and characters. I hurried the students out the door, found pen and paper and started madly scribbling notes. I knew right away that this was a treasure of a story but one I could not claim as my own story. I was just the teller.
I went home and started writing, and what happened next continues to surprise and delight me. SOOOOOO many plot elements were wonderful, serendipitous joinings (coincidences sounds so existentialist and random) where names, places, plot elements and characters just fitted together perfectly. For example, one of the novel place names is so perfectly named (in reality) that it was as if the early explorers and settlers who named it all those years ago knew the book would need it. The main street of this place is also – quite amazingly! – named after the main character. I could not have planned it better.
Now the book is finished. It’s a book for everyone. I’ve written it as I needed to. It’s a miraculous thriller and, in the same way that it was a gift to me, it is now a gift to you. There won’t be a sequel. When you read it, you’ll know why.
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BIO:
Greg Byrne is seriously unbalanced. He has no ability in cooking, dancing or singing, but loves nothing more than teaching grammar to primary students, primary teachers, and university students. He takes much more pleasure than is deemed polite in tunnelling into the deeper caverns of the English language to find all its hidden secrets. He also writes novels about people, places, events and actions that are most un-ordinary, but is paid much less.
When he is not pondering grammar or planning novels, he enjoys exploring places, ideas, history, languages and science, dinners with friends, watching his family grow, and living life’s great adventure. His next projects are a young adult thriller with a twist, developing a grammar teaching system for schools, and writing a grammar text for ESL students. He lives in Perth, Western Australia, the most isolated capital city on the face of the planet, with his beloved wife and family and an overweight British Blue, and wouldn’t live anywhere else.
Great story! It’s amazing how many times pantsers like ourselves find coincidental plot developments that just fall into place with what we planned.