Writing a Novel

So, I've started on a novel. Anyone who has ever written a novel or tried to write a novel knows that you start writing a novel long before you WRITE anything. Where to begin? Well, you need a premise. That much my pet chameleon can, and did, tell me. "Gary," he said, "you need a premise before you can write a novel." I gave him some lizard food and set about coming up with a premise. And the one I've got will turn out to be either A) the most brilliant post-modern novel yet written or B) the most preposterously pretentious novel of 2010. Hell, not everyone can have a million dollar idea like "The daVinci Code" or "Clifford the Big Red Dog." So I might as well have fun with it.

I've got a protagonist. I'm calling him Hatcher (even though that probably is not his name, but don't ask him to tell you who he really is) as a now not-so-veiled homage to both Brian Evenson and Thomas Ligotti, both of whom have written characters simply known as Hatcher. I'm completing the cycle.

I've got a setting. It's (ostensibly) a penal colony called The Belange. Here Hatcher tries to piece together a mystery while suffering from almost total amnesia. But he's not alone: everyone else is in the same boat, apart from the masked guards who do not speak.

There will be an old woman with a stack of family Bibles she uses to select names for the newcomers. There will be crepuscular phlebotomists called the Skeeters (the Esquidar brothers). There will be a dream demon who tells Hatcher what clues to look for. There will also be some strange creatures: the galoot, the oaf, the lummox. And also, a plot of some kind.

I will update my blog as I feel I make progress on this, my first attempt at a novel.