Greetings beloved readers. Thanks for being here.
Philip the Bard is taking this week off due to the release of Kusha within the next week to ten days. All this week I will be telling the tale of how Kusha came to be.
Kusha is the exciting sequel to The Gavaskar Field, released just a few months ago. Both novels grew out of my Harappan History Project.
The Harappan History Project began in 1973. I had just finished reading Lord of the Rings. I was pondering what and where was “Middle Earth”. I speculated: “What if Middle Earth was settled by humans from planet Earth and then after many generations Earth was forgotten.”
That of course leads to the question; “What if people from modern Earth showed up at Middle Earth?”
I wrote a short story over the next few days based on this concept. In it there were elves and wizards (who weren’t really wizards, they just called themselves that) and deep dark secrets. I never quite finished this story. I carried it as a stack of spiral notebooks for decades, always thinking about revisiting it and completing the project.
A few years ago I moved to Nelson British Columbia so my partner could attend art college there. I wan’t able to get a work visa so I had some time on my hands. I got a new lap top and went to work on the story. It wound up being a one hundred and eighty thousand word saga of loyalty, betrayal and ended with the ruination of planet Harappa.
The conclusion had our hero, Dorian Thain lead the Harappan people to a new world called Kusha. The Harappan people rode off into the sunset and all was good in the Universe.
Seems that the publishing world wont even look at such a long novel from an unknown author. In thinking about ways to market the Harappan saga I came up with the idea of writing a series of short stories that I could sell to magazines and such. I decided to write twenty stories. I thought that would make a good TV season.
I wanted the stories to show the underbelly of the Universe my stories were taking place in. On a long drive, my partner and I came up with the germ for Max Gavaskar. A brilliant young college student who discovers the dark secret about humanities’ faster than light starships. That puts her on the run in the dusty back water town of Salmo on planet Lava.
While writing these stories I came to love little Max. I came to understand that she was the key to the larger story. Dorian’s story led up to Max and Max’s story leads up to the conclusion of my dream. When Max’s story is done I will most likely be done with science fiction. (I have other writing projects I am looking forward to.)
So, I turned Max’s series of short stories into a novel and published it last fall. (For those of you who have read it, please understand that I was in a rush to put it out and the first edition contains many typos. A second edition will be out soon.)
While the manuscript was at the editors I had nothing to do so I started writing Kusha. It just poured out of me over the course of a few short weeks. In no time I had a completed manuscript. The plot is much more complicated than The Gavaskar Field and it required more work insuring that timelines matched and such. However, the story is much more action driven and my strength as an author is action, so the writing flowed and felt easy for me.
I’ve had many heated discussion with my partner about character motivation and plot points and I feel strongly that I have put together a fine story. I hope you will enjoy it.
Tomorrow: The Creation of Max Gavaskar
Never mix red wine and Oodo.
Richard “Bubba” de la Tour
Earth year 2014
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