The Telegraph’s Debt Crisis Blog reveals

“Analysts are getting good vibes from the packed-out stores in the States - particularly vendors of Justin Bieber apparel and Twilight merchandise.”

Who could have forseen such a day!

It got me thinking about originality. I inhabit the software industry with its endemic start-up culture. The water-cooler conversations are always about cool ideas for a new web site or business. It is almost a religion in this business - the cult of originality. It can become tyrannical. That same tyranny to be original seems to be a driver in “high-concept” thrillers too. It is said (I can’t remember who) that for every original idea you think you have, there are at least 3 people in the world having the same idea. Some will be in better position to pursue that idea, or further along with it than you. For example, tablet PCs have been around for years. The idea was in even Star Trek (and probably earlier than that). But it took the convergence of Steve Jobs to bring the idea to its time with the iPad. Now they are everywhere.

Then there is the school of thought that says there are no really original ideas in the world anyway - it’s all been done before. If we followed it to its logical conclusion, we would never do anything at all!

So does the discovery of a potentially similar book de-rail me?

No.

There is also the school of thought that you can do something others are doing, but you should do it in your own unique way. We are all standing on the shoulders of giants. Don’t let the tyranny of orginality topple you. As they often say on Litopia, you can’t protect ideas, only the expression of ideas. So I won’t be reading any cybercrime novels for a while, just in case!

I have always asserted that authors can only write the books they can write. Authors are the amalgam of all the ideas, philosophies, experiences, and people that have influenced them in their lives. There lies the originality and the uniqueness. It is a writer’s style, and the way he or she combines story elements and plots that makes the work unique. I want to complete my own draft this month. I want to write those scenes in my mind on the steps in Odessa, and that pivotal character piece in the Karelian forests, and that closing scene in the streets of Seattle (whose charms I first discovered last year).

I noticed the same thing even happened to Mr. Russinovich - a novel just published after his by David Baldacci with the same name Zero Day! At least I can change my title. (By the way guys - I have the domain zerodaynovel.com registered if you want it!)
Congratulations to them both. I know that writing and publishing a book is a major achievement.

In truth, we write because of our creative drive, our characters, our own imaginative worlds … and for the fun of it. There’s nothing like it!

Recently, I started to think that we might have it all wrong. The third World War may already have begun.

Unlike the last World War, it won’t be a war between nation states. It is a war within states. A global civil war. It may be a war unlike any we have seen before. All facilitated by modern social networks. Civilians rebelling against the stringencies and austerity imposed on them by their governments.

“The Arab Spring” in the middle-east. Civil unrest in Greece. London riots today. Where next?

Snow drifts and financial storms happen for a reason. Trouble brings people together.

After I get back the REAL work begins - promoting it! And then a first draft of the next novel. Busy, busy.

See you in a couple of weeks!

To read about my own work things like “enjoyable and a very good read” and “the author does seem to have done his homework both from an ethical and scientific perspective” and “I really believe this book should be made into a film” is wonderful and great validation of the years of work in getting it to this stage.

But the nicest surprise is this: a totally independent view of the meaning of this story.

Of late, I had been so mired just getting it all right, making a good thriller, tweaking the pace, or editing the grammer and punctuation, or fixing typos, or submitting to agents, or receiving the obligatory agent rejections and false starts, only to be left spinning and wondering what I actually had in this story at all. How nice to get this assessment - pinpointing with laser precision - the true meaning of this tale: “this book raises the fundamental bioethical questions about the definition of human dignity, how it is conferred and the manner in which a person understands his or her identity.”

Thank you Dr. MacKellar; you have reminded me why I sat down to write this book in the first place.

It’s just a quick snap that doesn’t show the full detail, but it looks gorgeous in close-up. Getting there …. bit by bit. The new web site is underway too, and should be live just before publication.

Oh sure, the old arguments against eReaders are still there: “nobody will read an entire book from a screen.” Those arguments haven’t changed. There are only two factors that have changed in the intervening years, combining to make eReading a viable medium in this era: portability and ubiquity.

No one was ever going to sit down to their PC to tuck into a good book. PCs were for work; the last thing you wanted to see when you felt like a recreational read. Reading was always something to take to a special place, or fit in when and where you had some down-time. Neither of those apply to a PC. But the era of personal portable computing devices has arrived. Like a book, we can take those personal devices around with us; unlike a book, we can even slip a computer into our pocket.

In the olde days, the only way to get the book bits onto an eReader was on a “floppy disk” (look it up), or the very fancy new medium of “Compact Disc”. No USB keys back then. Now we have the ultimate form of digital distribution - the wireless internet. Download any book over-the-air from anywhere. Book access is now ubiquitous, as ubiqutious as the marketing-driven popularity of Amazon’s Kindle or Apple’s iPhone/iPad - the eReading devices that have become de rigueur.

There is nothing new in software technology, only hardware. All the software tools and techniques I use every day were all invented decades ago. But what is new, is this singularity - the creeping convergence of all technical factors to make the right time and the right place for something to just … take off.

Next … eReading moves beyond the constraints of the old medium to which it is currently compared … matures in its own unique aspects … comes of age … and becomes something new.

Words … finally in motion.

It’s been a long uncertain journey to get here, but I’m finally feeling excited again. Enjoyment is what it’s all about.

I’ve started to heal my ailing novel also. The revisions and rejections meant I’d lost passion for it, and it’s impossible, in good conscience, to undertake another revision without passion. Otherwise, I would ruin it. After reflecting during this time of reparation, and thinking about how the novel would change, I find I’m no longer afraid to make the changes that a couple of months ago would have seemed harsh. Sometimes surgery is the most appropriate course of action for a patient, as drastic as the incisions may seem. Time to relieve its painful patches too, and roll it out to the world, fitter, leaner … and stronger than ever.