These were my speaking notes for the launch of the Circle of the Chosen Nov. 3 at Books on Beechwood in Ottawa.
My introduction to science fiction came in 1971 when one of my Canadian Press coworkers I shared a Montreal flat with left a copy of John Wyndham’s The Chrysalids on a coffee table. He had gone to the office while I was transitioning from a morning to an evening shift. It was a soggy fall day and having nothing pressing to do, I started to read the book.
I spent the whole day reading the story and the next day combed local book stores for other of Wyndham’s works, which include The Day of the Triffids and the Midwich Cuckoos. From there it was onto Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, Robert Heinlein and countless other SF writers. Along the way I found copies of The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings and was surprised how much I liked Tolkien’s story telling and the world he created. Terry Brooks is another fantasy writer I follow.
While SF remains my favourite genre, I wanted to try writing a fantasy novel. According to Anne Marchand, one of my beta readers, The Circle is also romance novel. I’ll leave it the readers to judge how successful on the romance side.
My first two novels, Humanity’s Saving Grace and A Biot’s Odyssey, were straight sci-fi and I tried to make them as scientifically plausible as I could. I like to think my third book, Ultimate Wizard, is a mostly sci-fi with some magic thrown in to enliven the tale.
The Circle is about the struggle between the Evil and the Spirit. The Evil wants dominion over the Lands of the Great River while the Spirit wants to preserve them for its followers. To stop the Evil, the Spirit must find a champion who can withstand the Evil. What it doesn’t realize is that the champion cannot do it by himself. It requires the love and support of those to him to do that. That’s what our hero must learn. The Circle of the Chosen are those who will give him the power to succeed.
The stories I’m working on now are all sci-fi as well and I hope some of them will make it into print in the coming years. To me, it’s an interesting process combining what-if and what’s plausible in a story that people will hopefully enjoy reading.
Would I write another fantasy? I have to admit that as I worked through the various rounds of editing and revising The Circle, I could envisage a sequel using some of the characters in this book and some new ones.
In the meantime, I make notes about stories that I would also like to write as well as finish the ones I already have in various stages of completion. If I can stay on course, my next book will be Intelligent Design, a post apocalyptic story.
I also would like to write a follow up story to my first two books using the Biots in them and other robots they encountered in the second book to set out exploring the Milky Way and in the process rescue a species from another galaxy.
I’m fortunate in having a good team of writing friends who I can bounce story ideas off and get valuable ideas for developing plot lines.
Alex Binkley 