It took me four years to write Chapter One. Four years, three laptops, two cities, two universities, many libraries, immeasurable amounts of alcohol, bouts of religious fervor, rabid atheism, a return to religious contemplation, a couple of therapists, and a cigarette. Hopefully such long period of internal refinement paid off. Hopefully.
There were several alternate beginnings to Helia, Adlan and Soren's stories. At first, I thought of starting out with a big bang from sentence one. But before the world went to hell, I wanted to see their ordinary world (well, even then, not so ordinary). The things that mattered most to them.
For Helia, it's her family, specifically her dying father. The mystery of her father's illness is revealed near the very end of the book, but at the beginning, Helia is a deeply unhappy and lonely person.
Adlan, on the other hand, has no family. He has a surrogate one in the form of his best friend's mother and siblings, but he too is very much alone. Unlike Helia, he's had longer to cope to with his feelings. Cope is a generous word, actually. No, he drowns his feelings in drugs, work, but most of all girls (coming soon: Adlan's Girlfriends, a story of girls who loved to hate this very bad boy).
Soren, like Adlan, has no family either. But unlike him, she tolerates no vices. She is ambitious to the point of ruthlessness, focused, and disciplined. Soren, unlike Helia and Adlan, doesn't wallow about her feelings. She does something. And what she has done, had led her to keep a dark and very dangerous secret.
At the beginning of the story, our three heroes are quite miserable, really. In a way, perhaps, if the world were to remain the same, they would find themselves in truly dark places. Helia, in a mental pod, indefinitely sedated, watching a never ending loop of pulsars and quasars. Adlan, in the hallway of a ship orbiting Neptune, naked and unconscious with no memory of the previous weeks events. Soren, imprisoned in a dark metal cell, hurling abuse at robots and humanoids.
Some very dark places indeed.
There were several alternate beginnings to Helia, Adlan and Soren's stories. At first, I thought of starting out with a big bang from sentence one. But before the world went to hell, I wanted to see their ordinary world (well, even then, not so ordinary). The things that mattered most to them.
For Helia, it's her family, specifically her dying father. The mystery of her father's illness is revealed near the very end of the book, but at the beginning, Helia is a deeply unhappy and lonely person.
Adlan, on the other hand, has no family. He has a surrogate one in the form of his best friend's mother and siblings, but he too is very much alone. Unlike Helia, he's had longer to cope to with his feelings. Cope is a generous word, actually. No, he drowns his feelings in drugs, work, but most of all girls (coming soon: Adlan's Girlfriends, a story of girls who loved to hate this very bad boy).
Soren, like Adlan, has no family either. But unlike him, she tolerates no vices. She is ambitious to the point of ruthlessness, focused, and disciplined. Soren, unlike Helia and Adlan, doesn't wallow about her feelings. She does something. And what she has done, had led her to keep a dark and very dangerous secret.
At the beginning of the story, our three heroes are quite miserable, really. In a way, perhaps, if the world were to remain the same, they would find themselves in truly dark places. Helia, in a mental pod, indefinitely sedated, watching a never ending loop of pulsars and quasars. Adlan, in the hallway of a ship orbiting Neptune, naked and unconscious with no memory of the previous weeks events. Soren, imprisoned in a dark metal cell, hurling abuse at robots and humanoids.
Some very dark places indeed.
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