Ten Days a Novel: First Edit

Being as this story is very short for a novel (60K is abut as short as it gets while still being a novel), and it's an action horror, it didn't take long to comb back over.

I loaded it onto my Kindle for a change in venue, which really helps to catch things, and started into it. About twelve hours later (over three days), I've gone back over it. Even for its length, that's pretty quick. I'll need to do another pass, but I'm happy with how this story came together. It's also kind of interesting all the things that pinpoint dates of creation (outside blogging as I went).

I'd re-watched the movie adaptation of The Running Man about a week before beginning this, and while it's great (so is the book), it didn't fit that well with my Canadian sensibilities. En masse, people don't seem all that eager to devour the masses or jump ship when they decide they like someone they'd hated. People need a reason and usually, rather than feeling exposed as wrong, they stick to their early choices. I revisited it while writing, but only half-assedly.

In Radio Run (that's the title of this manuscript), I followed a similar path, but built a situation more suited to normal people set out in the wilds because the public perception of guilt had shifted. These were not big bruisers (well, one is, sort of), these are just people. Canadians, which means if they're doing anything at all, ever, the CBC would put it on air if anybody wanted to watch it.

The next was a conversation I had with J.H. Moncrieff (listen to some of it here: iTunes). She lives in Winnipeg. For me, Winnipeg has always been just a stop in a very long trek, because I've only had to be in Manitoba for something once, but have had to cross it several times. I use Winnipeg as a starting point. Also, she wrote a book about sasquatches titled Return to Dyatlov Pass. As a Canadian, it's part of my citizen duty to reason how squatches could exist. In doing so, more wheels started turning. I won't give away anything in case this story sells, but this was a lynch pin in how the story came together in a smooth line.

The next piece was Victor LaValle's The Changeling. I was listening to it in the early days and he named a character Apollo because another character liked Rocky, but didn't want to name their black son Rocky and instead named him Apollo, after Apollo Creed. I fucking love Rocky and The Changeling was great, so I used the name Apollo too.

The last big one came with my wife complaining that we only watch horror movies. Which then had me thinking about great movies that aren't horror movies. We watched Thelma & Louise and once it was finished, I knew why my subconscious pushed this one to the forefront. Won't say, again, in case this story sells.

That's about it. Radio Run is two parts The Running Man, one part Thelma & Louise, one part Journey to the Centre of the Earth, and a dash of Jurassic Park, set over a pure Canadiana landscape.