Kirana

Back in 1999, I wrote my first novel, as a test to see whether I could even do it. I started January 1st, and wrote an hour a day, five days a week, my only goal to keep writing for that whole hour. In the beginning it was rough, embarrassing, sloppy, and I had my doubts. But after about a month, I’d say, I slipped into a routine, a regimen, and I actually looked forward to my writing sessions. After initial hesitancy I was never at a lack for ideas, and I learned a lot in the process of carving out that first draft.

I found out that my strengths, as they appeared to me, lay in characterization and dialogue. I enjoyed listening to my characters talk to one another. Talk, argue, fight, plan, plead, brainstorm … I really wasn’t part of the conversation. They were. It’s a really weird sort of an existential phenomenon, one you won’t understand unless you yourself are a writer. But that’s what I loved most.

What surprised me was my realization that exposition was something I really had no talent for. I just couldn’t do it, or couldn’t figure out a way to do it that seemed natural. Every story has some important background, every setting has some essential details, that you need to convey to the reader without boring him or taking him out of the story. I couldn’t figure out how to do it inconspicuously. I think I’ve greatly improved, but I still view it as a weakness.

The novel had somewhat tragic roots. Back in the summer of ’97 I wrote an outline that intrigued me; a few weeks later I banged out a little over 30 pages (double-spaced Microsoft Word file). It wasn’t earth-shattering, but it was exciting. For the first time since Star Rats I was a novelist. Then, fate struck. Being somewhat new to Word, I inadvertently deleted my file, then saved the empty version. What was I thinking? I don’t know; I just panicked. I lost everything. I did not have a hard copy.

That disappointed me so much that a year-and-a-half had to pass before I resumed the novel. I finished the first draft mid-July 1999. I edited it and created the second draft September to November of 2007 (I wrote two drafts of this novel in the interim). It’s geared to a younger audience than that second novel, but in many ways I think it’s a funner work.

You want a brief synopsis, without giving away too much? Okay.

A couple-hundred years in the future, the human race has spread through the galaxy. The McGuffin that drives expansion is fueled by diamonds. And Kirana, a dead, airless world, is a veritable diamond farm.

There’s a major mining facility on the planet as well as a military base to ensure that everything involved with the production of the gems goes without incident. Sure, there’s tension on the homeworld, tensions throughout the settled planetary systems, but when has there ever not been?

Then – an explosion. Massive. At the mining facility. Can’t raise ’em on the shortwave. The base sends a couple of search-and-rescue parties, and after surveying the carnage and bringing back a few survivors, they also unintentionally bring something else back.

The body of Kirana deals with our heroes figuring out just what did come back with the SAR parties. And the whys and hows of the Big Picture. There’s plenty of violence, false leads, trickery and double-crossing, and misfortune. I think the rewrite did justice to the ending, which now packs the punch the first one didn’t. Ironic and more of a shade of gray than its eight-year-old predecessor, Kirana draft no. 1.

Coming soon to a bookstore near you!