Welcome to the world of The Shattered Moon

As this is my first post on Substack (do we call them 'subs'?) I thought a quick intro would be in order. There's a little general background and then a longer bit dealing specifically with my novel series and where it all comes from.

I've been writing fiction as long as I can remember. Ever since I was at school (a long time ago!) I had stories bubbling away in my mind, and would write in whatever spare time I could find. Most, but not all, of what I wrote was science fiction—which, by the way, was always abbreviated as 'SF'; if you called it 'sci-fi' you weren't part of the club.. I even made a couple of attempts at extra-terrestrial Utopias.

However, for many years I made my living as an outdoor writer and photographer specialising in landscape, travel, and outdoor pursuits, particularly walking, climbing, and cycling. Between all of these, I've had my name on 60 non-fiction books and many articles, and I've won awards for my writing from the Outdoor Writers and Photographers Guild.

After a few health issues (now mostly resolved), I've devoted much more of my time to fiction in the last few years. Three Kinds of North, Book One of the Shattered Moon series, was published in February 2023  and Book Two, The Sundering Wall, followed in August. Book Three, Vows and Watersheds, is due in February 2024.

The Shattered Moon

Whatever The Shattered Moon series is, it's not a Utopia; but neither is it a dystopia. I struggle to find simple descriptors for it, which is something I'll tackle in a future post. In the meantime, the best capsule description I've managed so far is: 'a coming-of-age story set in a post-apocalyptic world that may feel strangely familiar'. Even that falls down a little in later volumes as the main recurring character, Jerya, ages well past the point where it can still reasonably be called a 'coming-of-age story'. The rest, however, was well encapsulated by a reviewer of Three Kinds of North: "The familiar and the strange are expertly woven through this impressive novel."

Originally I wrote one lengthy novel (c140,000 words), which I called The Shattered Moon. I wrote the final line of the first complete draft on 10th December 2017. Yes, I made a note. I even made a note of what I was listening to at the time (Close to the Edge by Yes; some sort of regression to adolescence going on there?).

Even then, now 6 years ago, it had been a long time in the making. It was already more than twenty years since I wrote what would become the opening chapter of Three Kinds of North. I had no idea then that it would take so long to come to fruition. There are many reasons why it did, including the time and energy taken up by my career in outdoor writing and photography (and all the activity and travel that it documented). However, I am also open to the idea that I just wasn't quite ready to do justice to the whole thing.

I said above that Jerya "ages well past the point where it can still reasonably be called a 'coming-of-age story'"—but perhaps coming of age is a process that is never fully resolved. One look at the man-baby antics of certain public figures (fill in the blanks for yourself, possibly in the spot marked 'X') suggests that many people have a lot of growing up still to do even at a supposedly mature age.

Perhaps if I'd had more time to reflect on, and write, The Shattered Moon earlier in life I would have done a decent job of it. That will always be an unknown. What I do know is that the book as it stands isn't the one I would have written twenty years ago, and I'm okay with that.

I have no simple answer for the perennial question, "Where do you get your ideas from?". I suspect most authors feel the same. However, I do have some thoughts about things in my life, and in my reading, which have ended up somewhere in the mix.

My own University years probably had something to do with the idea of the Dawnsingers' College. Ironically, I spent those years at an all-male college (St John's, Cambridge); in that sense, at least, the antithesis of the Dawnsingers' College. Feel free to suggest that the idea of populating a similar environment with females began as wish-fulfilment! (St John's saw the light a few years after I left.)

What's more certain is that my relationship with my College, like Jerya's with hers, was ambiguous. Sometimes I felt like I'd found an ideal place; sometimes I felt I hardly fit in at all. And one random thought: my friends and I did like seeking out pubs which weren't totally student-dominated. Perhaps there's a trace of that in Jerya's forays to the tavern to visit Rodal. Also, memories of intense alcohol-enhanced sessions of 'putting the world to rights' in someone's room are surely behind one particular chapter.

And then there's reading. I devoured books of all genres from an early age, but was hooked on science fiction since I found the likes of Andre Norton, James Blish, and Patrick Moore in the local Children's Library. I rapidly graduated to adult titles, at a time when the 'big three' were Asimov, Clarke, and Heinlein.

I was always fascinated by stories that explored the ways people can live (and live together) rather than ones that were tech-heavy, or were just war/horror stories with a different backdrop. Of course, much of what I was reading then looks pretty dubious through 21st-century eyes. There are lots of big ideas in Asimov's original Foundation trilogy, for example, but where are all the women?

And then I picked up a book that permanently rearranged my head. It shook up the way I thought about science fiction, and about writing in general, and gave me a favourite author for life. That book was The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K Le Guin, published in 1969.

LHOD nailed, once and for all, the myth that SF doesn't do character; it focused on sociological rather than technological themes; and the ice-cap trek with its wonderful descriptions of landscape was guaranteed to resonate with me (though it was nearly twenty years later before I did anything similar myself).

Above all it, famously, plays with gender roles. The Gethenian people are both asexual and genderless, except in their intervals of kemmer. You could psychoanalyse me on this if you want; all I can say is that I was fascinated.

Somewhere around this time, I read two other books which explored, in very different ways, the idea of a society (in one case an entire world) composed entirely of women: Charlotte Perkins Gilman's 'Herland' and Poul Anderson's 'Virgin Planet'. Though much older (1915 vs 1959) I'd suggest 'Herland' stands the test of time rather better. You can judge 'Virgin Planet' by the unquestioned assumption that a man—just an average, random, man—would automatically be "the biggest, strongest, human on the planet", even though some of that planet's women are trained hunters or fighters, clone-descendants of a selected ancestor. As a young reader close on 50 years ago, I know I was innocently oblivious to a lot of debatable attitudes (not least in Heinlein) but at least I could see the weakness of that assumption..

I took  'Virgin Planet's' basic premise—lone male castaway on all-female world—for one of my early attempts at a novel. Whatever else was good or bad about it, I made sure not to fall into the 'biggest, strongest' trap. There are two people in this world who've read that early effort, and it's likely to stay that way.

If you've read 'Three Kinds of North', or at least the first few chapters, you could be forgiven for wondering if you're actually reading a fantasy novel. Well, here's the thing: when I started writing it, I wasn't sure whether or not I was writing one. Obviously, I came to a decision eventually, but I've kept that ambiguity—I might prefer to say 'openness'—unresolved until well on into the book. The tension between what people believe, and what's actually true, is central to the story. I wish I could say I planned it that way all along.

The Last Five Years

As I said earlier, I finished my first draft The Shattered Moon on 10/12/17 (12/10/17 if you do dates in the peculiar American fashion). What's happened in the 5+ years since?

For a start, health issues and a general awareness of mortality made me think I really ought to give fiction a higher priority while I still could.

The decision to split The Shattered Moon into two books followed soon after. I reworked the first book, renamed Three Kinds of North, and began submitting to literary agents in July 2020. I've had some encouraging responses, notably from the renowned Julie Crisp, but no one loved it quite enough to take it on. So, almost five years after that first draft, I committed myself to self-publishing. I researched the process intensively, and invested money as well as time. The results are now here for you to judge.

Other projects which got past the 'rough' stage include a portal fantasy and a contemporary Young Adult novel. I've also got a couple of 'harder' science fiction books in the pile, and I'm hoping to give one of those another polish, maybe try it with a few agents.

I've also turned my hand to short stories, all SF or occasionally fantasy. Curiously, though I was comfortable with tight word-limits in my non-fiction career (1800 words for one of my long-term regular outlets), my 'short' stories always tended to spread. I rarely managed anything under 5000 words, which is the upper limit for a lot of markets. Again, I've had a fair few 'we like it, but not quite enough' responses, but never got beyond that. A couple of these are now free to read on my website.

For now, though, (December 2023) I'm dividing my time between final honing of Vows and Watersheds, and development of Book Four. As things stand, Vows and Watersheds is the longest in the series but Book Four is arguably more complex. For the first three, I've limited myself to two main point-of-view characters (the series is written in 'third-person limited' viewpoint); Book Four has twice as many. There's been a certain amount of juggling with timelines, and now my primary beta reader has commented that the ending felt somewhat abrupt. Since her follow-up observation was that she wanted more, this wasn't altogether bad news. Now I'm busy trying to resolve more of the storylines, while leaving plenty of scope for future volumes.

While all the books have multiple POV characters, there's only one whose narrative runs through all four. By the time of Book Four, she, Jerya, has come a very long way; not so much physically as psychologically, although The Sundering Wall does describe a major journey through the mountains and into the unknown. (For this I drew extensively on mountain journeys in my own life, though I've always had a map). In Book Four she's reached her mid-thirties and is living a life she could not have imagined at the opening of Three Kinds of North. as a nineteen-year-old in a remote village. Perhaps, allowing for my earlier caveat, she's even come of age? What's certain is that she's startled into reflection by the idealism and impetuosity of a new character, who seems like an echo of her own younger self.

I said I wanted to leave a few loose ends for future volumes, and I do have some ideas for a couple more. However, what looks like the most likely next step after Book Four will  be a collection of shorter pieces built around three linked novellas. These will explore three scenarios which see Jerya’s life unfold in radically different ways, based on the principle that small choices or even chance events at one point in time can lead to very different outcomes later on. All three are set in the same time-frame, eighteen years after the events of Three Kinds of North. In the canonical timeline (sounds pretentious, but what else can I call it?), this would be three or four years after Book Four, so Jerya will be about thirty-seven years old. It's been fascinating to work on these and to explore how a person's character can both change and remain the same under widely different circumstances.

Wow, this has turned into a lengthy first post. Hope I haven't tried your patience too much. It feels like there's been a lot to pack in. I'll do my best to be more focused in future posts. Up next, if all goes according to plan, a few thoughts about the occasionally contentious position of a male author writing about female characters.

Meanwhile, if you'd like to know more and be kept up to date, you could consider signing up to my newsletter. Doing so also gets you a free short story from the world of The Shattered Moon. There's also more information and more reading on my website.

Thanks for sticking with me this far.