Great review for Babel

                                                           

 

From Amanda Jones

From the very beginning Babel grasped my attention as the Peace Child is needed so much in today’s world. Then as I read further echoes of Coronavirus greeted me as we delved into a futuristic realm not far from reach of our own imagination.

The scene is set with Switch Off brought about from a population so healthy and disease-free that death needs to be a controlled administrative function. But Babel is not all about bleakness, we learn about Kaleem as he comes to understand his life’s purpose and origins wrapped into a personal story of love and desire.

Rozia adds interesting foresights as chapters open her diary and we read her thoughts. Then the dark nature of humanity is brought to us with Kevik. We are led to hope for change, but will it be for the better? Disability and discrimination is brought upon an innocent race but soothed with a true kindness.

As we near the halfway mark we learn about the creation of the Babel book and a break into our familiar, present world and author-editor relationships are explored; much to my delight as an author with a printing/graphic design background.

Gill cleverly and imaginatively weaves realistic possibilities into the book as she draws from our own past. Does history repeat itself? There are certainly echoes of wrongs and rights but this future world with a highly technical civilisation brings intrigue as with all hierarchy. Will they listen? What will going backwards create?

Babel leaves me with a truly possible reality we are almost on the cusp of and reading the book in 2020 Lockdown brought shivers of foresight. Enjoy entering this world and follow the hope of peace.

 

Babel and the Prophecy

                                 

 

Someone has just written a review of Babel, the second of my Peace Child trilogy.  This was first published in 2011 and I have some distance from it now.  The review made me remember some astonishing things:

·          There was concern a about an aging population because medicine had become so good. People weren’t dying so in order to stop overpopulation compulsory euthanasia was introduced

·           A pandemic had spread over Terrestra

·          Terrestra had cut itself off from other planets

·          Terrestra now had to reach out to other planets  

·          The protagonist’s enemy had become involved in a fascist movement

And Book 1 is called The Prophecy.

 

Oh well. Stories repeat themselves don’t they?     

The Peace Child Trilogy

                                                     

 

Trilogy? I've actually just finished writing the fourth book and her is a fifth one planned. Will there be  sixth? Will it become like Frank Herbet's  Dune? That started off as a trilogy and ran to nine books in the end. 

Click on the picture above and you'll be able to find all three of the books.  Babel is central to the theme of all three books. Kaleem is haunted by a prophecy to do the with Babel Tower.  Yet  he lives in what our world might become by the 36th century. Some of it all goes back our time and yes, it is all to do with  speaking otehr languages .... in many different ways.

So, I'm organsing a giveaway:

• one paperback of Babel
• ten mobi-files    
• twenty PDFs. 

And yes of course I'd like you to review it. 

Use the contact form to express an interest. First come, first served. 

 

Lots of Books

I’m feeling a tad prolific, a trifle gob-smacked, if not somewhat overwhelmed and even a little inert.

I have four books just out and a fifth out any minute now.
Babel is out as a paperback, it and The Prophecy are now available on Kindle. Hipp-O-Dee-Doo-Dah, the anthology which I’ve edited and in which my story The Gargoyle appears, is available now.

Shortly, my novel for 9-11, Kiters comes out with Tabby Cat Press.

I’m doing a special offer on signed copies until 30 June. Sign up for my newsletter if you want to know more.

It’s all good, I guess, but I’m so busy, I can’t get my head round launching properly.      

HUROPEL and Babel

Babel had its first outing on Friday. I talked about the issues in it and how the society on Terrestra in the year 3500 dealt with a healthy but aging population.   

The HUROPEL Conference is taking place at the University of Salford 4-15 April 2011. HUROPEL is a collaboration between Universities in 6 countries in Europe running an ’Intensive Programme’ for two weeks on the themes of Human Rights, Older People and End of Life Care.

Babel fits, because in Babel there is “switch-off”. Much of the novel is about doing away with “switch-off”. Yet the issues are complex. Terrestra is scared of disease because it has none. So, it keeps itself isolated. Coupled with this is an intolerance of imperfection. It’s actually quite difficult to talk about one issue without bringing in another.

Fiction is useful to us, however, because it can explore factual material in a closer emotional way. Science Fiction is particularly useful for young adults because it stylises and symbolises our present lives. It can be to young adults and adults what anthropomorphism and glove puppets are to younger readers.

I talked and read passages for about 50 minutes. We then spent another 45 on questions. Which were lively and interesting.  I had the impression that Babel’s first public appearance actually went rather well.

More about HUROPEL. More about the world of  Babel. 

Creating Worlds

Before I started writing The Prophecy, I spent months creating my world. I sat in cafés dreaming of Terrestra 3500. I worked out how people lived, what they ate, how they dressed, how society was organised, how they travelled around, what they believed in, what they did for fun and what the physical attributes were of the planet. On top of that, there were also the normal thoughts about character and plot.
Now, I’m revisiting all of that and thoroughly enjoying it. One of the editors at The Red Telephone has suggested that I provide a glossary of characters and setting features for readers of Babel as they may not remember it all from The Prophecy. He has a point. I’ve had to look up some things myself.
However, I’d never suggest using a glossary instead of setting everything up correctly. It should be obvious what certain things are and who certain people are from the way they are introduced. It would be wrong to bore readers of the second volume who knew the first for the sake of the handful who go straight to volume two. I’d like to emulate Oisín McGann who is a real master of setting up worlds, especially in his novel The Gods and Their Machines. There are no words of exposition. He simply shows us his world. This is extreme showing not telling.
Another writer who does this successfully, this time in an historical context, is Caroline Lawrence in her Roman Mysteries series. The first time you meet a Latin word or a little Roman culture, Lawrence makes her meaning transparently clear. She also includes these items in a glossary at the back of the book in case you have forgotten what an expression means the next time you meet it. For those readers who are really interested in Latin words and Roman culture there is more on her web site.
Yes, I’m really enjoying writing the glossary about the world I have created. It’s also reassuring me that my world works.

Ten Writing resolutions for 2010

1. Catch up on that 2000 words / two hours a day thing. How can I call myself a writer unless I do at least that? That is after all what it is all about. It doesn’t matter whether it’s fiction, non-fiction or academic papers as long as it’s writing.
2. Get Babel finished. Shouldn’t be a problem. I’ve three and a half more edits to do. Mid February will see the end of it perhaps.
3. Finish And They Thought I Didn’t Know. A little relief from edits of Babel. It’s my first poetry novel.
4. Sack my publisher if she doesn’t come up with the goods.
5. Get funding for Potatoes in Spring. Could this be the basis of a sabbatical? It fits in so well with Holocaust studies yet has the odd twist of showing a German Point Of View.
6. Start Peace Child. Odd, working with that title again. For years it was the title of The Prophecy which was actually published in September 2009.
7. Give some thought to Voices. This will be a Young Adult novel about a girl who hears voices in her head.
8. Give some thought to In Search of the Sun God. Will this be an excuse to go back to Tenerife? It’s all about the people who went there looking for the Sun God.
9. Heavily market Babel. What will it take to make sure that that really gets out there?
10. Keep doing all those other writerly things that still count. Remember that nothing is ever a waste of time – including waiting for the tram.

The "show don't tell" edit

We writers, especially those who teach, talk about showing instead of telling a lot. It’s one of the greatest signs of an inexperienced amateur – a great amount of telling. Sure, there has to be some exposition, but the less the better.
Of course, we also need to avoid the situation where we manipulate dialogue so that it becomes unnatural in our efforts to make one of our characters give the readers any background they need.
I’m reasonably good now at setting scenes into what feels like real time and space so I don’t have to do all that much usually in this particular edit. There are times, though, when I tell in order to propel the action forward. Sometimes this is because of laziness when I’ve not been bothered to write the actual scene. Other times, however, it’s because the detials are trivial and could bore the reader. This in turn sometimes means that scene wasn’t necessary. Other times though you do have to find another way of telling.
I find I get round the latter by telling the tale from the point of view of one of the main characters – the protagonist if possible. This generally works well.
It’s also important to refrain from naming emotions. It’s best to show the emotions by describing a character’s physical state and making him / her speak their mind.
“Telling” is characterised by long descriptions, often with several abstract words. “Showing” is generally full of dialogue and a considerable amount of action, giving the reader a real feeling of time and space.
I’ve now read the whole of Babel and found the weak points in this area. I’m now two thirds of the way through making the corrections.
Just three more edits to go.

Editing, editing, editing

I continue to edit Babel. At the moment I’m checking for character. Are the characters consistent? Do they grow? Are they rounded. When I use dialogue, does it sound like their voice?
I really do find it useful to check for one thing at a time, though I’ll often notice other things apart from what I’m actually looking for in a particular edit. So, writing always become rewriting.
There is the danger, I suppose, that after a while you become jaded and cannot see the major faults. In any case, though, you edit from big picture to smaller detail. You get rid of the real problems first and then come down to spellings, punctuation and syntax.
Yesterday, I also looked at final proofs of The Prophecy which comes out in September. I agreed with the copy-editor on all but one change. We were using Track Changes. I then accidentally “accepted all”. Fortunately, I’d got two copies. However, I was then not able to find the change I did not want to accept. I guess I just have to trust my copy editor.

Edit Three

I have just finished the third edit of Babel, the second part of the Peace Child Trilogy. The third edit is the one where I see that my Young Adult novel really is a Young Adult novel. I check to see that it is:
Mixed genre
Emotional closeness
Leaving reader to decide
Pushing boundaries
Fast paced / high stakes
Characters resemble young adults
Bildungsroman

I was delighted that with this edit I’ve hardly had to do anything. I guess, though that that makes sense. I write knowing these things anyway. I ought to know them. That came up in what I found out about in my PhD.
Always, when I’m editing, other things occur. I’ve decided I need to expand one section by two mini-scenes.
It’s coming along quite nicely.