Okay, so this is where I’m going to talk to you a little about UFOs, a little about ‘disclosure’ (for those who aren’t aware, this is a term common in the UFO community, to refer to a formal governmental announcement confirming the reality of the phenomenon) and a little about my writing. Oh, and a little about my backstory; those aspects related to the novel.

Following the New York Times article of 2017, concerning the Pentagon’s alleged UFO investigation – and detailing some truly anomalous sightings made by US Navy pilots over the previous fifteen years – I became hooked on the subject (by the way, there’s a link to this NYT article in blog post #3). I read as much as I could, and watched as much as I was able to binge on the topic of UFOs. At about the same time, I was trying – and failing – to write to completion my first novel. I’d attempted different genres and styles, all without success. You see, writing is a little like rowing the Atlantic; you can visualise the destination and the start is easy. You’re fresh and motivated. But those thousands of miles in the middle of the ocean require serious effort if you’re to stand any chance of seeing landfall. Besides which, as I discovered, you need to navigate. If you don’t have a course, you’re wont to meander and end up in the doldrums. Momentum is also key. All of which is to say, oftentimes I had the idea, but I was poor with the plan. The execution. I didn’t have sufficient fuel in my tank, or good enough charts to see me all the way to the finish line as efficiently as possible.

I’m getting off navigational course.

Anyway, in devouring information on UFOs, so the subject mushroomed and the more I realised the topic was far deeper and stranger than I could ever have imagined. I kept reading the word ‘disclosure’ and finding articles and YouTube videos on the subject of crash retrievals. Then I took a hard left at a junction signposted ‘consciousness’. I went down a road of investigation that took in the outer fringes of an already marginalised topic. The psi phenomenon. Telepathy. Remote viewing. ESP. Out of body experiences (OBEs). Near-death experiences (NDEs). Telesthesia. Clairvoyance. Even psychedelics. The list goes on.

About this time I was working as a consultant for a major global consulting business (following a career in journalism, marketing and PR, my career made an unexpected handbrake turn and I wound-up in management consulting). I came to realise these consulting firms have access to some of the most prestigious, high-profile businesses and brands on the planet. Across every industry too. Oh, and they work with governments also. It dawned on me any, let’s say, ‘aerospace firm’, that may have successfully reengineered crashed ‘alien’ (read, ‘nonhuman intelligence’) goodies, and needed to commercialise it, was sure to need outside expertise. I’d worked on enough major change programmes to know how it works. That then raised the ‘what if?’ question.

But what about the characters? Slowly but surely I began to sketch out a cast. I also started making plentiful notes about how I thought the novel should play out across three or five acts. It took the best part of six months to broadly outline the plot and settle on themes and scenes. Finally, in the autumn of 2021, I began writing.

And soon after stopped. Something seemed off. It needed a heart. Sadly, around this time, my disabled brother passed away. Along with the rest of my family we spent time reflecting on his life. He’d been a unique character, despite his disability. Curious, courageous, funny and intelligent, with a wicked sense of caustic humour. He’d also wanted to know everything, especially in his formative years. And then I remembered the rumour that, as a child (I had been too young to remember at the time), he supposedly acted as guinea pig for what ultimately became one of Professor Stephen Hawking’s communication technologies. We called my brother’s device, the ‘light talker’. Alas, my brother was too disabled to gain any benefit from the tech and he never again used computers. He couldn’t walk or talk. His life was never his own, being so reliant on others for everything; from feeding and washing, to going to bed, or the bathroom. He was especially dependent on others for any form of communication. It occurred to me he would make a brilliant subject for a character study, in the vein of Christy Brown’s My Left Foot (subsequently a film, starring Daniel Day-Lewis). But I didn’t want the character to be a victim, or a cliché, and I certainly didn’t want to depress anybody!

What if I put him in my novel?

And this is where the ‘join the dots’ aspect of creative writing kicks in, as a direct line to the subject of consciousness, and realms beyond full, current, human understanding, opened up. It all snowballed from there. For example, one of the families in our neighbourhood has identical twin daughters. The supposed telepathic abilities of twins has always fascinated me. That was another dot joined.

About this time also, Elon Musk’s much-rumoured neurotechnology was deep into development. Well, you can’t have twins who aren’t somehow able to read the other’s mind. And just suppose one of them has just such a technology inserted in their head, required for purposes identical to my brother – but to communicate externally.

The final piece of the puzzle, and a dramatic and significant scene, was inspired by the six-months I spent as a chaperone for a close family member (during the time of Covid lockdown), making a Netflix sci-fi show. That experience really opened my eyes. I concluded if you want a blockbuster moment, where better than on the set of a blockbuster movie.

The bottom line is I went back to the drawing board and planned and pantsed my way to the finish line. And this, the above, is my own full disclosure. No spoilers, mind!

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