Category: Author’s Notebook
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Breaking Free – Another go at the plot
24 March – I’ve changed the working title of this project from Escaping Well to Breaking Free. I find that to put a story together, I keep mowing over the plot, writing and rewriting to get it to sit nicely. In the following document, I’m writing from memory, from the heart. I’m not cutting and…
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Breaking Free – Conversation with ChatGPT
This is a planning document, helping me clarify my thoughts around the three main threads in the upcoming novel, Escaping Well. I had a conversation with ChatGPT, and was very pleased at the insights it spat out. It is not creating any storyline, but it is certainly giving positive feedback, which made me feel good…
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Old Nuns
I just met a woman who works with old nuns. She is a medical officer and serves a group of aging women who live in a closed order. This means the convent they live in (think ‘Sister Act’) is not taking on any new novices. It will cease to exist when the old nuns die.…
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Breaking Free – Novel Concept.
Short synopsis and possible opener to “Escaping Well,” a companion novel to “Holding On.”
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Holding On News.
If you check out my short bio, you will see that my first novel, Holding On, is on track to be published by Elephant Page, (based in Perth, Western Australia) later this year. Tonight I am sending off the latest version of the manuscript. I was responding to some great advice on small structural edits,…
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Novel outline. The Hoser.
Okay, this is a pretty grim storyline, but it’s necessary to make my point. Part One is “The Monster In the Cave.” I want to capture the horror that the ancients must have felt when they discovered what the ‘gods’ required of them – the twisted, sick requirements around human sacrifice and sexuality. This would…
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Novel outline. The monster in the cave.
Recently, I heard someone say that ancient people tried to control the gods, and in a few moments, I had the germ of a story for a novel, set in a post-apocalyptic agrarian society where tribes and settlements battle each other for supremacy. Part One Turner is in his twenties, but without proper employment. He…
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What makes a “quick dip” in the ocean?
This morning I took myself for a quick dip. It felt like something I needed to do. But what constitutes a “quick dip”? I tracked my own thoughts and feelings as I went for the swim. This is what I found. I put my shirt keys and phone on some dry rocks near the ocean…
This is Jotham - Author 