Kumiko (war world #3) novel -- sixty-seven thousand words - Hecate-inspired audio noise terror

while I have a week off work, while I'm no longer driving buses around Oxford, I challenged myself to finish this third novel in the War World series: namely Kumiko. During the week, I had several spells of jog-solving. I'd be out on one of my daily 4, 5, 6 mile jogs and suddenly, I'm juggling 4, 5, 6 Kumiko loggerheads with C2S or Cracking Creative Solutions, LOL. And it was a juggling act itself to get back home with all these ideas/solutions intact. Admittedly, one or two of them didn't make it into the story but they led onto actual novel content. It was kinda like 'dreaming whilst running'. Very strange.

The musical inspiration for this final push of typing-in was Hecate's Ascension Chamber, Hecate at the Seven Gates and The Magick of Female Ejaculation CDs, a ritualistic triumvirate that has inspired and energised my writing mind since I first heard them when I was working at Rebellion in 2009. I'll actually be writing a collaborative novel with Hecate (aka Rachael Kozak) in 2016 titled "Vemonist", the first chapter of which my co-writer has already titled Snake Knives and Razor Eyes. So somebody's probably gonna end up getting hurt, somewhere down the line.

Kumiko's come a long way since my last update - come a long way in terms of word count which is now 67,000 words and looking like a worthy conclusion to the War World series despite its kinda left-field opening premise and kinky ethnological stance i.e. the eponymous faun-Kumiko herself. The origins of War World and how mankind can ever hope to logically escape were coming together in a way that was both interesting and organic, and this is from the writer. Half way through this final rewrite though I realised that I'd double-attributed one of the essential narrative threads and had to go back in and reassign ownership of it to one or the other of the characters.

In fact, I nearly broke the book, right there in the last week. But I think I've salvaged it, and in a non-arbitrary fashion. It wasn't so much a coin-toss as a considered move on the Great Chess Board of story writing. I didn't have to fill out a tedious and expensive PAF or Patent Application Form to do it, either.

Kumiko's due for simultaneous release some time in (later) 2015, once I've finished Reaper (that's free planet #3).

Kumiko (war world #3) - truly stunning excerpt from a seriously crazy-mad novel

The current total comprises 46,000 words total consisting of 33,000 words of eight chapter plus 13,000 words of extra notes.

And if you're at all interested, here's a paragraph or two to illustrate the 'feel' of the book as it currently stands, an excerpt that shocked and stunned my co-writer of the BoyFistGirlSuck (erotic horror for the certifiably insane) horror-porn short story collection, Alex Severin - so it's not for the faint-hearted or weak-stomached. You ready?

First of all, there were the Pre-flight Checks. 

Yes, it was just like flying a small aircraft across restricted airspace. She hung there, floated there, was held there in her intense stress-position'd torture space. She was like an over-tightened drum skin at this point. Her bones were regulation-plus-one distance from the cartilage that lubricated them. She was stretched out to her fullest extent. No way could she become any long-lost human wife of girlfriend at this level of body torque. 

The limb of the concealed Glimpser (whom she was yet to meet) had penetrated her primary centre. Internally, yes, but on a terminal level. She died straight away, or it seemed like she did. Maybe she forgot to let the sorrow of her own loss flow through her. Maybe she just didn't even notice. Either way, it was like she died, then un-died. It's very hard to explain how the dimensions of a Chain Dancing faun work. And let's not forget, that's what Kumiko was. 

She blinked out. 

If you were looking right at her you'd say it was a here-today gone-tomorrow kind of moment, being rammed to death by the Death Chrome Flog-dildo Sex Engine. Her head back like the most ferocious orgasm was biting the shit out of her g-spot. Like she'd internally ruptured and would later pull fat handfuls of come out of her lovehole and shove it into her face like Royal Jelly. Like she'd been shat on by the biggest flapping-eared elephant, an arseful of buzzing flies each carrying mange or tsetse or bubonic plague. There are just too many sick and twisted adjectives to apply, like a fat handful of lube, to the utter gore-show of the Engining experience. 

Relax, concentrate on the factual content.

I don't know. I really don't know where this is going to go, or end. But I do think Reaper (free planet #3) needs the back end of Kumiko-content adding to it. I say 'adding to it' because I don't think the Kumiko story (as it's developing) won't contain all the notes or already noted narrative material I want or wanted to include. It's like it's branched off from the many branching potentials of the narrative threads I'd laid down over a brief brainstorming period early last year.

I can migrate a lot of these options into the Reaper novel, very easily. But then I'd have TWO unfinishable novels. Maybe that's my cross to bear -- I usually find a way out of troubles like this. Patience, and writing. That's the answer.

Kumiko (war world #3) - forty thousand words - first draft

Well, I guess it's time for another writer update of the Kumiko (war world #3) novel.

Firstly, my (planned) completion of the Reaper (free planet #3) novel went out of the window, and it's still on hold, until I've gone a little further with the (supremely weird and invigorating) Kumiko novel.

Something's happened to the motivational & structural direction of the proposed Kumiko novel and this is an essential tying off of the bleeding arteries in the whole IS THIS A WAR WORLD OR IS THIS A FREE PLANET? issue. I'm going to come out and say it, "You'll not like where Kumiko is going, where the Tandem/Watcher prequels didn't go," in fact, you'll be hyper-disappointed that it turned out this way. But it has to be like this, for a reason.

To show what a dogma-dictated-to species you are, to show how you'll sacrifice your sons and daughters to facilitate the arbitrary ruleset of the War-mongers and the Profit-makers. Only by ruining your expectations of this crucial third wheel in the Tandem/Watcher-inspired trilogy will you see where it all could have gone, had mankind had a spine. Had 'humanity' not been a slave race of dogma-riddle'd sheople.

Secondly, "It all depends on the number of arms a Tandem shares."

Standing total: forty thousand words, and more than a third of that is still 'crib notes' so I have no idea how big it's going to be. I suspect about 69,000 - 100,000 words but who knows? It could all fall apart or I could die before it's finished. Fate's such a cunt like that.


DAYS LATER POST-JOGGING UPDATE: jogging, for me, is a great way to resolve problems, it's very much like the rhythm of dreaming. Left, right, left, right, breath. With dreaming this left-right is the movement of the eyes and the chauffeuring of the dreaming content across the Corpus Callosum or Brain Divide. With jogging, it's the simple act of Staying Alive i.e. Not Dying.

I got some good imagery to do with the White Cat Chamber or Bleeding Room and also a co-conspirator or on-board stowaway who liberates humanity from the enslavement of Space Travel. It'll all make sense eventually.

coming in late 2015...

New total: forty-two thousand words -- still have no idea how long Kumiko will be or whether it has the legs to sustain. To the end. To liberate Free Planet's third part. It's all gotta gel, tie together. Across all worlds. I'm definitely thinking about brining out the Full Trilogies in 2015, once this third part has been published.

Excerpt from a future chapter of the Kumiko (war world #3) novel I've yet to write

Kumiko (war world #3) novel: spontaneous excerpt from a future chapter I've yet to fully transcribe. This is at the point in the war world novel where Kumiko starts to see that all her life on Faedon might have just been at the behest of 'some other kindred spirit' or 'some other driving force' and not really under her control. Like all us war world soldiers, Kumiko's not much more than a pawn in a game. And she's not happy, realising that. Therefore, vengeance is on its way.

  I don't feel real any more.
  This thing, this body, this brain, this personality, this 'me'. It doesn't feel like mine, any more.
  I'm a trained lab animal, a monkey without fur, a nothing entity with transferable skills that lead me to obscene conclusions about 'your world' and it's not your fault - it's all my fault for not seeing it earlier in 'my life'. I suspect I could have saved more of you from yourselves. I hope I could have been there for you, when you erupted from your chrysalis, into real-ness. Into space.
  I'm the everyman, the everytime, the everyday; I can be useful, helpful, compassionate, jolly, infantile, mature and sick, and insane, and not worth knowing. Or I can save you all. I can split every atom or heal any hole or wound or rupture or damage. Like a tool to fix a breakage or a pill to cure an ill. But I'll never be me. Me - you have no idea what 'me' is, do you? Think of ghosts of former selves we've never known, meshing together momentarily to satisfy either side of an equation. That's all we are, ghosts on one side of the divide looking in on the unimaginable sum.
  I'll never be that class of thing that really knows itself. I'll never be self-sentient, because NONE OF US ARE. We're all constructs of our upbringing, shards of someone else's work, little fragments of a thousand broken holograms of a million former lives and cultures and influences and non-logic. Il-logic. Part of the mind-game, random conglomerations of fate. Cogs within a million machines, nothing more than not-who-we-think-we-are. Lost, in some dark place. Un-us. Un-me. Un-real.

Kumiko (war world #3) novel - man, it was sooooooooo oooooooobvious.

of course, of course, that was how it should have ended.

It's not written (of course) yet, but I have just flashed the colourful and graphic ending and the narrative/character denouement to the Kumiko (war world #3) novel and fortunately/luckily it also helps tie up some of the issues I was having with Reaper (free planet #3).

Basically, you have to see the six books of both the War World and the Free Planet trilogies converging. Books one of each trilogy at the ends, then books two closer in, finally books 3 soft-merging in the middle almost (but not essentially) dependant upon each other. A shared denouement of sorts but still two original parts three and two distinct (and truly insane) trilogies.

I know I've talked about this soft-merging before when I was discussing about waiting to finish Reaper until some Kumiko issues were ironed out, so this was kinda planned (in a way) but I'm really glad to have come to this conclusion in this 'working hard through it' way. And it REALLY WORKS, believe me.

Mozart's Requiem is the CD of Kumiko (war world #3) - Sir Neville Marriner - Herbert Von Karajan and Rafael Fruhbeck de Burgos

as Ruichi Sakamoto's THREE became the official writing theme song of Liberator (free planet #2), so Mozart's Requiem has become the official writing theme song of Kumiko (war world #3).

It's been playing, unintentionally for the first few thousand words of Kumiko, then definitely intentionally every real re-engineered chapter since I had the 'dream about the content', the dream after the dream, the download from the heavens, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Requiem by Neville Marriner and the boys, the HMV Classics edition (pictured above) has been playing during every recent writing session.

Track list:

Requiem in D minor Edith Mathis soprano | Grace Bumbry alto
George Shirley tenor | Marius Rintzier bass
New Philharmonia Orchestra and Chorus
Rafael Frubeck de Burgos

Ave verum corpus
Singeverein der Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Wein
Philharmonia Orchestra
Herbert von Karajan

Exultate, jubilate
Barbara Hendricks soprano
Academy of St Martin in the Fields
Sir Neville Marriner

Basically, whenever this music is on, I'm probably writing some more of the Kumiko (war world #3) novel, I'm self-entraining to produce written output. Isn't it sick?

Tom Hardy - Ivan Locke - the Kumiko (war world #3) journey

I saw it last night, the film Locke with Tom Hardy centre stage, and I knew, I just knew, that this is where my novel KUMIKO (war world #3) needed to go...

A driver, driving.
An engine, engineering.
A task's been given, a right turn's been taken, and the whole of her world has been trashed, literally torn to bits, in favour of this new journey, this forced slog through the snow, this odyssey.

Ivan Locke, it's a quiet little nothing of a film that could have so easily been relegated to stage play or radio play, and it would have worked, but then the cameraman was amazing, and the way the film was shot over seven nights while travelling, actually travelling the trip from A to B that our humble hero Ivan Locke takes, and the supporting cast were actually THERE, every night with him, phoning in their piece live,  every night, every take shared by the whole cast and crew even though only one man is in the driving seat having to sort it all out and cope with his life falling apart around his ears.

The onerous, ponderous, odious task.

And I knew where the Kumiko novel had to go -- on a wonderful crazy journey -- with Kumiko strapped in for the long haul while all these people gather round her and argue with her and love her and hate her and join forces with unlikely allies and take amazing turns of story. I've got the first four chapters done, dusted. They're about 4,500 words each, and that makes me happy. And finally... finally, there'll be a birth scene just like in the film.

But it'll be an abortion ... or at least an already happened scene ... and all'll seem lost. Nothing will add up. But it'll not be lost, and everything will (eventually) add up. There'll be a rhyme and reason for it all, not matter how grim it gets. Trust me, I'm a liar and a thief of other people's genius.