Because I write what can be loosely called ‘cross-genre’, sometimes ‘mixed genre’, it’s often difficult to explain to people what a story is all about.
“How long have you got?” is often my first response.
Anyway, short answers are difficult, so I’ve tried a number of times to break things down to basics. It’s been a learning experience! As the author you know the story intimately and have a grab bag of assumptions which your polite questioner doesn’t have. It’s very easy to become boring quickly and put people off.
So … I’ve learned that to do the work justice and keep people interested you have to tell a little story. It ends up (for me) being a bit longer than a traditional blurb or pitch but hopefully, like all good stories, it hooks the listener.
Here’s that pitch for the second story in the SHEHKRii series – The Curse. I would love to know what you think of it.
PITCH: SHEHKRii – The CURSE
One of life’s little burdens is never being exactly sure if someone is telling you the truth. Imagine if you could SEE the truth.
And pretty much every other emotional state – anger, lust, joy, fear.
What if everyone could do this? Much of the baggage of our emotional lives would drop away – lying to one another would simply not be possible. You would have absolute honesty; absolute perception.
This is the doorway to the SHEHKRii –those who have returned to the path of intended human development. On top of which they can see other things – like speeding bullets, infrared and ultraviolet light, magnetism … and gravity. All of which they can influence and manipulate.
So how is this possible? No drugs, radiation or alien tech. They can do this because they are HUMAN; perfectly, optimally human. And we all have within us the code to achieve this state but it has been tragically jumbled.
Occasionally, that which was meant to be, surfaces. Think back to your school days; remember the really smart kids, the ones who didn’t have to try to do long division, they just did it. And the jocks, the guys (& girls) who could hit any ball thrown at them; make any football play work no matter how complicated. That’s the code, just poking its head above water momentarily. Put all that together in one person and you start to see what might be; what should be.
So, what’s it like to be SHEHKRii? How does it change your life? Dramatically, obviously. Most of the ‘rules’ go out window. And you see life very differently. You also become aware of Terra.
The Earth has a biosphere; a thin layer which we think of as Life. But it is the whole planet which lives: from the super-dense stone at the heart of its molten core to the electromagnetic web at the top of the stratosphere. And since all complex life has consciousness, we have Terra. The sum of us all and more. The heart, soul and Purpose of life on Earth. And we are her children, her instruments. And she’s a bit pissed at the moment. Things are not going to plan.
So what do you do if you’re a Planetary Consciousness and someone’s messed with you?
You fix things.
But Terra works in ages and epochs; individual lives tend to lose focus for her. But this problem needs fine tooling, so a very delicate, very human instrument is needed. Someone to take the dying flicker of humanity and fan it into the furnace that it should have been – a keeper of this human flame – Mahk-te-heh-pankukhan.
A thousand years ago, Terra started the process that would produce her ultimate instrument. In 1903 he was born. Male, because mobility and aggression would be needed; Immortal because the task would be long and the reward must match the risk; Unique, because he must be more than what was intended in order to achieve it. Nathan Chalk, born to an Irish mother and Breton father, carrying the accumulated heritage of all humanity; his birth, an eon spanning journey that started with his ultimate grandparents, a crippled Hindi girl and a shaman from the hordes of Genghis Khan.
A magnificent future from an unknown heritage – all of which has to be kept under wraps in order to succeed. If only …
Into this planetary drama stumble two very unusual people, Mark Todd and Lindsey Keough.
Todd is an Australian journalist – a drunk but brilliant financial analyst with a mouth to shame any sailor. He has tripped over a particular SHEHKRii and is obsessed with tracking him down.
CIA agent Keough too, has seen the SHEHKRii but in her original form as Sun Wu Lin, the last descendant of Sun Tzu, the ancient Chinese military genius.
They collide in Canberra and Sydney, chasing Todd’s original quarry but soon discover much more and begin a global journey which will take them to places they never expected to go – places beyond Death … beyond Love … into the very soul of a planet.
iDM
spikesaysstuff 