SCRIPT-TEASE, OR THE ART OF THE SLOW REVEAL

I’ve been asked to think about the ‘blurb’ that will go on the back cover of the paperback edition of ‘The Demi-Monde: Winter’ and as these invariably include quotes from reviews I had a quick trawl through the ones the DM has garnered. And one aspect of a couple of these reviews that was particularly noticeable was how impatient readers are.

For instance, one queried how the technology in the Real World was so much more sophisticated than our own when the setting of the Real World was only eight years distant from our own. Because the reason for this wasn’t spelt out, the reviewer automatically assumed it was because I had being rather naïve in my extrapolation of present day technology … that I’d screwed up. He didn’t trust me as a writer to have done this for a reason and was so linear in his thinking to be incapable of conceiving that there might another rationale for this apparent anomaly.

Another couldn’t understand why the Dupes were dependent on blood, putting this down to an aberrational quirk of yours truly.

What these reviewers were forgetting was that this is a four-book series, with the story developing gradually. Each book will peel back a few more layers of the fictional onion that is the Demi-Monde … what I call ScriptTease. Hopefully as each book of the series comes out there will be readers kicking themselves and saying ‘Of course!’.

I suppose if I wasn’t an SF debutant readers would be more inclined to trust me as a writer to resolve and to explain … eventually. But, hopefully, over time, out, readers will learn – I hope! – to rely on me and my storytelling.