THE LONG SLEEP

A SCIENCE FICTION NOVEL

STEPHEN A. MELLOR

This is my very first novel and, as such, it's something of which I'm very proud, despite its faults. (I am not so egotistical that I have failed to recognise its imperfection. Although, its close.)

It’s a science fiction, detective, thriller, trans-gender novel. Which is almost but not quite as ridiculous a description as the one for Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency.

The basic plot concerns a colony ship that has been sent to a planet – initially codenamed Gamma Six. Upon it’s arrival, it explodes. Back on Earth, five years later, a distress signal is received. A member of the Executive Committee – Lize Carr – employs a private detective – Kem Logan – to discover whether or not it was sabotaged. Kem’s investigations take him to places and into situations that he has never before encountered – including a lesbian nightclub, a country home and elsewhere.

The Genesis of The Long Sleep

T.L.S. (which in this case has nothing to do with education…) has had a long gestation. It took either four years or eight months to write. I’ll explain…

The original version of the novel was a short story written about four years ago entitled The Gamma-Six Affair. As such, it was about 12,000 words long – at the time, the longest thing I had written and I was very happy with it. However, people (not the least of which was Candy) kept telling me that it was too short and it didn’t have enough information in it. They kept insisting that it would work as a novel. So, eventually (after a long period when I didn’t write anything at all – a particularly barren patch all around) I attempted to convert it into a novel. I was doing reasonably well, expanding the opening and introduction of the main characters. However, I ground to a halt after about 10,000 words having not got much past Kem’s (or Kim’s as he was then) intro and initial hiring. This was about two years ago.

Everything went very quiet on the creative side once again, with only the Captain UK: Body and Soul fanfic story appearing out of the gloom. Writing that was great and I got some of the best and most interesting comments on that I’ve ever had (‘reading [C.U:B&S] almost made my head explode!’) and so, once again, I got the writing bug and decided to return to Kim and his exploits.

After that (roughly November ’99) I worked pretty hard on it and reasonably constantly, although there was no way that I succeeded in writing every day, no matter how much I may have told myself that I was going to. March 2000 was a particularly poor month, I think I may have written about 2000 words during it. When you consider that during a good week I could do 14-15,000 words it gives you some idea of how bad it was.

Actually, writing T.L.S. gave rise to the one single New Years Resolution that I have ever made. On the 31^st December 1999 at roughly 11.55pm I said to myself ‘I will finish the novel by the end of July…’ Sure enough, I actually finished the first draft on the 27^th of July 2000. So, for the last couple of months I’ve been polishing it. Editing it gave me the opportunity to read the whole thing properly for the first time and I have to say that I was really pleasantly surprised by how good it was. I mean, I know I’m not the most objective person in the world when it comes to this, but I did quite enjoy it. Of course, in five years time I’ll probably be horribly embarrassed by the whole thing, but what the hell. It’s a first attempt!

I’ve sent it off to several publishers (currently it’s been rejected by Hodder & Stoughton and Little, Brown) and I’m waiting to hear from HarperCollins. I’ve also been rejected by a couple of agents. But, I haven’t given up hope. I’m still trying…

The Long Sleep wouldn’t have come about without the help of several people. First and foremost of these is my erstwhile (not to mention long-suffering) editrix, Jean Rogers, who gave up far too much of her time, energy and printer ink to help me with the writing. Trust me when I say that no matter how bad you may think this thing is, it would have been a hell of a lot worse with out Jean’s input and influence.

Second, is Chaz Brenchley who not only gave me lots of advice and criticism, but also gave me a ‘quality target’ to work towards. I haven’t reached it yet, but this book has seen me come a long way down the road towards it. If you haven’t read his books, then you really should. They are all available from his website, which you can get to from the links page.

Finally, of the named people, there is Candy, my partner. She has suffered the long absences when I’ve been off playing with my friends in NovoCastria and she still hasn’t read the damn thing! Her chance comes now and, to be perfectly honest, her reaction is the most important one of all.

So, I’ll end this page (except for all the links to the actual book) with a dedication…

This book is for Candy.

For being just about bloody perfect.

Thank you.

Please email your comments to me. Thanks.

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