• Lunatic Writer
  • Novels & Novellas
    • Big Ledge Front
    • Big Ledge Back >
      • Big Ledge Review
      • Big Ledge More Reviews
      • Chicken Thief
      • Heaven
    • Loose Ends Front
    • Loose Ends Back
    • Loose Ends Interview
    • Loose Ends Reviews
    • Lunatics >
      • Copernicus Images
    • The Draper Catalogue
    • Eta Carinae >
      • Reviews
    • All Saints Day
    • Eta Carinae
    • Echoes
    • Book Reviews
  • Short Fiction
    • Sweet Melancholy
    • More Short Fiction
  • Drama
    • Willful Pursuits
    • More Willful Pursuits
    • Sproule's Folly
    • Gravity
    • Audio Drama
    • All the World's a Stage
    • Theatre Reviews
  • Astro
  • Author's Blog
  • Comments & Contacts
  • Res Naturae
    • Valhalla Provincial Park >
      • Gwillim Lakes
    • Record Ridge
    • Skattebo
    • Rock Slide Lake
    • Kootenay National Park >
      • Juniper
      • Marble Canyon
      • Paint Pots
      • Cobb Lake
      • Redstreak
      • Stanley Glacier
    • Waterton Lakes National Park >
      • Bear's Hump
      • Red Rock Canyon
      • Bertha Lake
      • Wall Lake
      • Prince of Wales
    • Old Growth Forest
    • Ripple Ridge
  • Abroad
    • Jamaica >
      • Aerial Creatures
      • Land Creatures
      • Ocean & Beach
      • Miscellaneous
    • France >
      • Paris I
      • Le Sud
      • Paris II
    • Oregon >
      • Washington
      • Cannonbeach
      • North Coast
      • Portland & Corvallis
      • Central Coast
      • Ashland
      • Crater Lake
      • Mt. Rainier
    • Belize >
      • Birds of Belize
      • Daily Life
      • Water Scenes
    • Greece >
      • Athens
      • Hydra
      • Argolid
      • Crete
      • Santorini
      • Mykonos & Delos
      • Delphi
    • Canyon Country >
      • Red Rock Canyon
      • Valley of Fire
      • Zion NP
      • Bryce Canyon NP
      • Grand Canyon
      • Sedona
    • Cuba >
      • Varadero
      • Jeep Tour
      • Havana
    • Cozumel >
      • All-Inclusive
      • Island Tour
      • Tulum
      • About Town
    • UK & Ireland >
      • London >
        • Ealing
        • Tower of London
        • Westminster
        • British Museum & the Eye
        • Thames & Greenwich
        • Victoria & Albert Museum
      • Northwest >
        • Grasmere
        • Chester
        • Liverpool
      • Southeast >
        • North Marston
        • Oxford
        • Hughenden Manor
        • Brighton
      • IRELAND >
        • Dublin
        • Killarney & Dingle
        • Muckross
      • York
      • West Midlands >
        • Hereford
        • Shrewsbury
      • Wales
      • Southwest >
        • Bath
        • Cornwall
    • Arizona >
      • Phoenix
      • Biosphere
      • Tucson
      • Nogales
      • Tombstone
      • Chiricahua
      • Kitt Peak
      • Casa Grande
  • I See You
  Lunatic Writer

REPRIEVE: Confessions of an Unpublished Novelist

4/3/2014

0 Comments

 
Picture
Picture
Feb. 5

Certainly I have been reeling since last hearing from my mentor: full of self-doubt, wondering if I should abandon the Lunatics project all together.  What has kept me from crossing the brink is probably my “cheap gene”—I’ve paid good money for this course, I’m going get whatever I can from it, no matter how painful.

Reworking the manuscript, I’ve begun to rearrange all the chapters so that they are chronological.  (I know! What a radical concept!)  Before my mentor had pointed it out, I didn't realize just how much I had been skipping around in time and location.

Why have I done this, my mentor asks?  It just confuses the reader.

Is it because I think this is how all modern novels are structured?  Well, golly, maybe that is part of it—at any rate, I didn’t think I was doing anything unusual by arranging my scenes this way.  Isn’t this how memory works? People remembering key moments from their past, not necessarily in order?

Of course, this is not how Jane Austen writes, my wife would remind me. Case closed.




Picture
Picture

All that being said, my mentor begins his comments with “I think this section overall works well.. it gives us a better grounding in Wernher’s personality and interest in rockets.”

Well, some relief in hearing that.


There is no doubt that my mentor regards Wernher von Braun as the protagonist of my story and, of course, he’s right.  But I see now it’s as if I’ve hedged my bets, telling the story through other prominent voices as well—as if saying to the reader—well if you don’t like this character, maybe you’ll be able to identify with this other one.

My mentor goes no to say about the Wernher I’ve portrayed: “He seems to be a really good bloke if can use a Britishism. I wonder, is his essential goodness partly an overcompensating on your part for his links to Naziism? He comes across at times as almost saintly.”

My gosh! What an insightful and challenging comment! Is this again an example of me not committing all the way, of hedging my bets—yes, he’s a Nazi, but he’s actually a pretty nice guy!  And does this reflect my underlying preference to avoid thinking the worst in people?  Am I once again just trying to avoid conflict?



0 Comments

LUNATICS:  another draft

8/6/2013

0 Comments

 
PictureWernher von Braun, the principal "lunatic" in my novel.
Working on yet another draft on Lunatics, this time with these particular commandments in mind:

·  Show, don’t tell.

·  Get to the action right away. Explain later.

·  Remove as many adjectives and adverbs as possible.

·  Start scenes later and end them earlier.

·  Raise the stakes.  Every scene should be about Death (physical, professional or psychological.)

  • And finally, most ominous of all, the Grand Commandment
 of the Holy Editor in the Sky:

                                   KILL YOUR DARLINGS!

That is, get rid of everything that is probably only of interest to you, the writer.

                                   DON’T BE BORING!!!

0 Comments

Guy Consolmagno & the Vatican Observatory

3/31/2013

2 Comments

 
Picture
Brother Guy--A Jesuit and research astronomer--echoes my feelings about the relationship between science and religion very eloquently.  At one point he reminds listeners that Scripture says: "God so loved the world that he gave us his Son."  Brother Guy emphasizes the fact that it is the "world" that God loves, the physical, real, rational, open-for-investigation world.  We are part of this world and, like God himself, are expected to love it.  Hence science. Hence environmentalism. Hence all charity and love. Amen.




Br. Consolmagno and part of the Vatican meteorite collection, courtesy Kevin Nickerson

(Originally broadcast on CBC's Quirks and Quarks on April 15, 2006)

Science and religion are often seen in conflict, but that's something Brother Guy Consolmagno would like to put behind us. He's certainly put it behind him. Brother Guy is the Curator of Meteorites of the Vatican Observatory in Arizona, and an accomplished planetary scientist, and he sees no tension at all between his science and his religion. He also thinks many scientists with religious beliefs feel the same way. The conflict, he suspects, is a result of people who know too little about both science and religion.


Click BELOW for the CBC interview with Brother Guy and learn what the Roman Catholic Church really thinks about science.

qq-2013-03-30_04_guy_consolmagno.mp3
File Size: 17348 kb
File Type: mp3
Download File

Picture

VATT--the Vatican Observatory, near Tucson, Arizona.

Picture

Ready for more? Here what the Vatican Observatory's chief astronomer, Jose Gabriel Funes has to say about the possible existence of
extra-terrestrial intelligence.

2 Comments

BOOK REVIEW: RED MOON RISING

2/18/2013

0 Comments

 
Picture
I am a space-junkie.  In a general way, I have long been familiar with the events leading up to launch of the world’s first artificial satellite, Sputnik, in 1957.  I was particularly familiar with the American part of the story: the public dismay and panic,  the rivalry between different branches of the military,  and the frustrations of rocket scientists such as Wernher von Braun who felt handcuffed by petty politics. But nowhere in my readings did I have much information about what was happening in Russia at this time. 

Red Moon Rising, written by Matthew Brzezinski,  addresses this gap in spectacular fashion.  In this book, Sergei Korolev, the father of Russian rocket science, the man more than anyone responsible for Sputnik, becomes a fully-fleshed character.  The reader becomes entranced by the fortunes of this brilliant but flawed man, sworn to a life of secret anonymity even as his satellites orbit gloriously overhead.  


Picture
Besides learning about Korolev we learn intimate details about Russian president, Nikita Khrushchev, and the inner workings of the Soviet Presidium.

Brzezinski does a masterful job portraying the bizarre and sometimes frightening politics occurring in both hemispheres at this time.  Most startling to me was to learn of the ultra-provocative policies of President Eisenhower’s Secretary of State at the time, John Foster Dulles.  With religious zeal, Dulles did everything he could to demonize the Soviets.  He raised the spectre of a  surprise attack against the United States when it was clear to everyone in the military that the Soviets had no such capacity.  Dulles spoke of “total war” and “massive retaliation” with no seeming purpose but to intimidate the Russians.  Dulles regularly ordered bomber missions into Soviet airspace to test their defenses and sent spy planes on reconnaissance missions at an altitude where no Russian jets could respond.

Is it any wonder then that Khrushchev, quite desperately, looked for some means of “retaliation’ of his own?

Of course, Dulles hyper-aggressive, paranoid, anti-Soviet policy came back to bite him big time.  For all their supposed ‘intelligence’, the CIA knew nothing about Sergei Korolev and, despite warnings from some quarters that the Soviet Union might soon put a satellite into orbit, no one in the White House believed it. The prevailing opinion was that the Russians were little more than backward peasants, led by a bumbling leader and thus incapable of such a technological feat.

Of course they were, and they did.  And that story makes up the fascinating content of RED MOON RISING.

     
8/10

Picture

John Foster Dulles... scary.

0 Comments






    ​Author

    Brian d'Eon, fiction writer: whose work modulates between speculative, historical and magical realism.

    Categories

    All
    1917
    2010
    Ainsworth
    Albert Einstein
    Apollo XI
    Astronomer
    Baillie Grohman
    Baillie-Grohman
    Begbie
    Big Ledge
    Blade Runner 1982
    Blade Runner 2049
    Bluebell Mine
    Book Review
    British Colonist
    Bruce Dern
    Capitalism Vs Climate
    Chapbook
    Civilization
    Climate Change
    Cosmology
    C.S. Lewis
    Dandelions
    Davie
    Dead Crow
    Deon
    D'Eon
    Diana Morita Cole
    Draper Catalogue
    Dreams
    E-books
    Economics
    Editing
    Eileen Delehanty Pearkes
    Eta Carinae
    Fassbender
    Flashbacks
    Gravity
    Gray
    Green Manifesto
    Grohman
    Guess Who's Back?
    Hammill
    Harold Fry
    Hayao Miyazaki
    Hendryx
    Hitler
    Internees
    Isaac Newton
    Jamaica
    Jfk
    Jobs Vs Environment
    John Keats
    Kenneth Clark
    Kootenays
    Korolev
    Lily Langtry
    Lunatics
    Mark Twain
    Matt Haig
    Mikado
    Millet
    Nebraska Movie
    Nelson
    Nixon
    Novel
    Novel Drafts
    Novella
    Novel Structure
    Opium
    Oscar Nominees
    Photography
    Pitch
    Plague
    Point Of View
    Primack & Abrams
    Publishers
    Queenie Hennessy
    Rachel Joyce
    Rejection
    Review
    Richard Bausch
    Sam Mendes
    Saoirse Ronan
    Science And Religion
    Science Literacy
    Sean Arthur Joyce
    Serkis
    Shakespeare
    Sideways
    Sinixt
    Sproule
    Sputnik
    Steamer
    Stranger Things
    Submissions
    Sweet Melancholy
    Telescope
    The Humans
    The Price Of Transcendence
    The Wind Rises
    Travel
    Treasure Beach
    Van Gogh
    Victoria
    View From The Center Of The Universe
    Von Braun
    Winter Photos
    Yeats

    Archives

    February 2022
    October 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    April 2020
    February 2020
    June 2019
    October 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    October 2017
    May 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    July 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    November 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012