It's Just A Plane In The Sky, It's Not A 9/11 Foreshadowing

I had no idea a novel I exhaled in less than a week back in 1996 was now worth so much on Amazon :


I've only been thinking about the novel recently because a friend pointed out something interesting about the cover I haven't thought about in many years.



Yes, that is a bongman smoking himself, but there's the view out the window :



The cover artwork was done by a brilliant Sydney designer named Jeremy. I can't say I ever liked the image of an airliner about to crash into two towers, but I think Jeremy was trying to foreshadow the disaster that befalls the characters in the book, which involves the unexplained collapse of a building.

But I was so blown away by what Jeremy created for the cover I couldn't ask him to change it.

ED Day : 'The End' Is Nigh

I'm a few days, maybe a week, away from The End of my online serialised novel, ED Day : Dead Sydney.

While I've always had a vague idea of how I believed the story would end, not writing to an outline means I've often been surprised at how the tale has turned out, chapter by chapter.

For example, (spoiler alert), the sniper murders of three key characters, a few chapters ago, wasn't something I planned, or even wrote in my mind. I didn't want that to happen to these people. I sat there, reading the words that appeared on the screen as they were slaughtered, as though I was reading the work of somebody else. A very strange experience indeed.

Most of the latest chapter now online, likewise, fell out of the brain dump in one fast 3am writing session after I tossed the chapter I had already written, and rewritten, and relentlessly polished until it was flat, sterile, fucking boring.

Where this new chapter leads the last part of the novel (maybe two more chapters) is not something I planned, or even now want to happen to these characters who have become so real to me in the past year. But I know if I delete this chapter and rewrite it to fit with how I originally thought this story would end, my brain will violently punish me by exploding a few blood vessels. And if I did slump dead onto the keyboard before I reach The End, there's about one or two hundred regular readers who I'm sure would dig me up to try and find out how it all ends.

This has been such a bizarre writing experience. I used to need drugs to trip myself out this much.

An excerpt from the latest chapter of ED Day : Dead Sydney :

There’s nobody to put out fires that big, and we don’t have the water to spare even if we had a volunteer firemen’s unit to activate.

Bookman had warned of all this. The destruction of our written history and culture, who we are, the story of how we got here, how we became a nation.

Bookman told me last week that 12 bookshops he knew of had been torched or burned, including antique shops loaded with rare books and letters. He made me promise him that if anything ever happened to him that I'd guard the Mitchell and State libraries with my life. I failed him. It's all gone.

I see it all now, what is happening here. We have a dangerous and destructive enemy, and this enemy is at war against us, the survivors of ED Day. They want to strip us of our history, and break us down, make us feel lost and helpless and cut off from our culture, who we are, where we came from.

They're winning.

You can read the rest of the latest chapter here. And feel free to leave a comment, as critical as you like (but make it a bit more insightful than "This Sux", okay?)

If you're not already reading ED Day, you can start from Chapter One here.

Freedom Or A Return To Prison Colony Days?

In the latest chapter of my serialized online novel, ED Day (about life in Sydney after a bird flu pandemic kills millions) some of the survivors are finding themselves in growing conflict with the man who has appointed himself their leader. Entire streets of Sydney are now burning, with no way for the survivors to fight the fires, after an act of arson.

The narrator, Paul, is now close to deciding whether he will stay and help the survivors he has come think of as family, or if he will leave the city and make his way to the Blue Mountains, where he knows his girlfriend waits for him.

From ED Day, Chapter Sixteen :

All the time we were talking, and arguing, Greenfingers had said nothing. He'd sat with us for a while when we were drinking harbour-cooled beers and then he’d gone back to his work. Outside the greenhouse, he was re-potting a huge variety of vegetable seedlings. Mostly salad greens, but also more varieties of tomatoes, beans and root vegetables. The huge garden beds of the Botanic Gardens, now mostly stripped clean of all those foreign decorative flowers and shrubs was filling up with Greenfingers' food crops. The soil was magnificent, rich, fertile (or so he told me). The ashes and crushed bones from the thousands of corpses that had gone through the funeral pyres were now feeding the fruit and vegetables that would soon be supplying enough food to help keep a few hundred people alive.

But as I watched Greenfingers working away tonight, almost oblivious to the towers of smoke and flame rising above the city, I wondered what sort of society would be living here in a year’s time, when most of the crops would be turning out a steady supply of fresh food.

Would this society twelve months from now be the small enclave of mostly free survivors that we’d had for the past two months, or would it be more like a return to the prison colony that gave birth to this nation more than 200 years ago, on the very same harbour foreshore where we now live?

Go Here To Read The Latest Chapter Of ED Day

Go Here To Read ED Day From The Beginning

Note : Thanks to all the readers of my blogs who have sent me e-mails of support, criticism and encouragement in the past four months that I've been publishing the chapters of ED Day
online. I will be able to make the finished dead tree novel available for sale through this and my other blog sites, and I hope to get the price for a copy down to around $20. The finished novel will, however, always be available online to read for free.

Right now I expect to have the last chapter finished and online by late February. The first print run should get underway by mid-March.

Thanks again.

"Make It End"

The latest chapter of my free online novel ED Day is now up :

If this was bird flu, I hadn't seen anything this extreme before. I coughed up plenty of blood and pus when I was ill at the detention camp. I felt like I was going to die, the throbbing agony in my bones and joints and the struggle to breathe through all that fluid, the endless vomiting and stomach muscle spasms, all of it made me want to die. But I didn't begin to decompose when I was still alive, like Maggie.

Is this the next mutation? Is this how bird flu is going to really finish off humanity? By mutating into an evil more horrific virus and delivering a immune-system apocalypse that means no-one can survive once they got sick because decomposition begins before you even die?

Be warned, though, this chapter gets gruesome as it vividly describes the last hours of an elderly bird flu victim.

If you haven't been reading ED Day, you can start here at Chapter One.

If you're a regular reader, here's a link to Chapter Fifteen.

Revelations On A Rooftop

From the online novel ED Day, about life in Sydney after the bird flu pandemic :

There was no moon, and with no huge glow of city lights, the star field seemed to be suspended just out of reach. Bright pure pindots of light, planets flashing colours, the occasional satellite blinking past.

The dogs were quiet last night. We could hear the dolphins in the harbour chattering away to each other. It seems like such a normal sound of this city now.

This is it then, I thought, this is how my new life really begins, in this new society in this new world after ED Day, it begins here, with Kat, kissing her under falling stars on the rooftop of the Imperium, in Dead Sydney.

One day, I said to myself, years from now, I will look back at this moment as the punctuation mark to when my old life ended and my new life began. Everything that happened between ED Day and now was just preamble, the prologue, this was the new start. With Kat, this was my new life.

I had to tell her. I knew it was too soon, but it felt like it was going to be the right thing to say...

I felt the words, I could taste them in my mouth, like I could taste the wine and chocolate on Kat's breath. I had felt this way for weeks now. I was sure she felt this way, too. How could it be too soon when we had both lost so much?

We needed to hear each other say this.

Go Here To Read The Latest Chapter From ED Day

Go Here To Read ED Day From The Beginning

Depopulation And The Black Triangles Spraying

From the online novel ED Day, telling the story of life in Sydney after the bird flu pandemic :

The phones were down, the electricity was out. Most of my neighbours had fled by then, and those that were left were burying their wives, husbands, children, in the back yard. I’d been helping a neighbour down the end of the street bury his wife and his dog earlier in the evening. I came back home, drank some warm beer, but I couldn’t sleep. I’d put away about five warm beers when I saw the black triangle swoop overhead at about 11pm.

I saw two black planes fly over the next night, March 18, and more web-like threads fell across my garden, my house, my street.

On the third night, I was fully alert and waiting for the planes. I was up on the roof of my place, lying back, and I saw them coming in from the west. I saw the mist the black triangles were spraying. The mist caught the moonlight and glistened as it fell across thousands of homes, hundreds of streets, dozens of suburbs.

The next morning, March 20, I rolled through the talkback radio stations that were still on air. There wasn’t one word about the black triangle planes, or the stuff they were spraying. Like it didn't happen. Like it hadn't happened three nights in a row.

On one station, an old man was talking about his garden, on another station a young woman was complaining about how hard it was to meet “decent men” in Sydney and that she was thinking of going back to Melbourne. The third station I tuned into delivered an argument between the usually fiery host and a young man who said because his rock band would earn millions, and he’d end up paying plenty in taxes, so the government should be paying him now to dedicate himself full time to his music.

But it wasn’t just banal conversation, completely removed from the reality of Sydney that day. None of the conversations sounded right. The old man talking about his garden sounded like an actor reading from a script, pretending to be an old man, faking losing his chain of thought, and apologising for it. The woman complaining about the men in Sydney didn’t sound annoyed, she sounded bored, like she had rehearsed her words too many times before.

The big news of the day, if I remember rightly, was the prime minister rambling on about how the worst of the bird flu pandemic had been contained. But it was the third day running for this story. No new news on it. Just more reassurances. It didn’t sound real, or live, like they claimed the broadcast was.

I thought then that if I went to the radio station studio, there’d be no-one there, just a bunch of pre-recorded CDs and digital hard drives pumping out the music and words that were supposed to calm, or distract, the masses from the horrific reality settling over the city.


Go Here To Read The Full Chapter For Free

Go Here To Read The Novel ED Day From The Beginning

From ED Day :

It's 5am. The sun's barely up and the heat is already becoming intense. No rain during the night. The city is wrapped in smoke. The fires in the suburbs and on the north side of the harbour are still burning. I can see the smoking ruins of dozens of houses across the water.

There's so many trees over there, small forests and national park lands packed with dried leaves, wild grass, dead branches. The fires could burn for weeks, months, until they run out of fuel.

If I thought it would work, I'd kill one of the lambs as a sacrifice to the Gods just to get some rain. Not just rain to put out the fires. The veggie gardens up on the roof are starting to wilt. The water drums up there are getting scary-low.

I've got enough water stashed away in my room, and other rooms of this hotel, to last me and Maggie and the other shut-ins three and a bit weeks. But that's only if I stop watering the vegetable gardens and fruit trees.


The above is an excerpt from the latest chapter of the online novel ED Day.

Go Here To Read More

"I Want To See This City Come Back To Life Again"




Another chapter now online from the free-to-read serialized novel, ED Day, on life in Sydney after an apocalyptic bird flu pandemic.

An excerpt from ED Day - Chapter Five :

It’s night outside now. The towers of the city stand tall and dark, shiny black fingers against the deepening sky.

Why did you leave me behind? I want to go, too...

I didn’t believe much in God before ED Day. I don’t believe in God any more now. Hundreds of corpses of little kids scattered all over the city makes you realise fast that there probably isn’t someone who really gives a fuck about what happened to us, or what happens to us now.

I want to go, too.

But I don’t want to go. I did a few weeks back. I stood on the roof, toes over the edge, waiting for a wind, or a muscle spasm, so I didn’t have to decide. I thought about Kat, and how she'd feel when she found out I was gone.

I thought about all those babies that Kat and Matron looked after in the hospital, some of them still fighting for their lives.

I thought about that day, three days after ED Day, when I came down from my rooftop hideout and first met Bookman and Matron and Trader, walking the streets, calling out for other survivors. I thought about how happy I was to still be alive, and to find people like them, so happy to have found me.

And I thought our first barbecue in Hyde Park, when three dozen of us cooked the last of the steaks that were still edible (before we cracked the first tin of Spam), and drank warm champagne, and found a few minutes amongst all the death and misery when we actually forgot what had happened and we were just new friends, having a drink, and eating together. Sharing. Surviving.

I want to go, too...

I want to survive this. I want to live through it, and see what happens next. Tomorrow. Next month. Next year. Two decades from now.

I want to find out if Chrissie is still alive. I want to see the vegetable gardens and rooftop orchards grow big enough to feed all the survivors. I want to see a whole flock of sheep and lambs grazing on the slopes of the Domain and chickens and ducks getting fat for our future dinners in the Gardens and all the streets of our part of the city totally cleared of corpses.

I want to help these people as much as I can, because we all need each other now.

And I want a million more nights like this, when you can see every star in the sky, and you can see the flurry of movement of the owls and other birds making new homes in the apartments next door, where people had left balcony doors open before they died, or ran away, and when you can hear the soft, beautiful songs of the dolphins in the harbour, as they swim and play, coming back to waters their ancestors knew before any of us came down out of the trees.

I want to be here, I want to be a part of it. All of it.

I want to see this city come back to life again.

Go Here To Read Chapter One Of ED Day

Go Here For The Latest Chapter


g

The Lambs Of Temptation

The second chapter of the online novel, ED Day, is now up. It's free to read and download and new chapters will be published three to four times a week :

ED Day : Chapter Two


ED Day is the story of how 300 survivors of a massive bird flu pandemic, that kills millions in Sydney alone, rebuild their lives and society in the city centre. They clean up the streets, stockpile food and water, but they are 'trapped'. Outside of the city, something terrible is happening, but so far the survivors only have glimpses of what is going on.

Here's an excerpt from Chapter Two :

...nearly everyone is hanging for fresh meat. A big fat juicy steak smothered with fried onions and sauce is only the stuff of fantasies now. Lots of fantasies.

Nobody yet has snuck into the pen where we keep the sheep and lambs we rescued from the petting zoos in Darling Harbour. Butt some of the survivors get this weird look in their eyes when they’re standing around watching the sheep and lambs crop the grass in Hyde Park.

I probably do, too. There's about sixty legs of lamb walking around the park most afternoons, with Preacher as their shepherd. Trader was drooling over those lambs one day last week, and he pointed out that some of the lambs were snacking on the wild mint that's popping up all over the park.

"Look!" he said. "They're just asking for it!"

Go Here To Read Chapter One Of ED Day

Dead Sydney

By Darryl Mason

This will either be one hell of an adventure, or an absolute disaster. But it's too late to back out now.

From today I will be publishing three or four short chapters a week from my new novel 'ED Day' on a dedicated blog. That is, I'll be posting chapters from the new novel I'm still writing.

The chapters are free for you to read, download and even comment on, if you're motivated or inspired to do so by what you read. And I hope that you are. If you've ever wanted to be a book critic, before the book is finished, here's your chance. Go for it.

I'll be posting chapter two over the weekend. Another two chapters will go up during the next week.

The novel, written in the form of a journal, tells the story of how 300 people survive a massive bird flu pandemic that wipes out millions of people in Sydney. Some of the survivors are convinced there was nothing natural, or accidental, about the pandemic that has killed everyone they knew and everyone they loved.

As the story unfolds, you will learn more about how the pandemic came about, how the survivors met, and how they go about rebuilding their lives and society.

A quiet, still Sydney where humanity has all but disappeared is a scary place, but I like, and believe in, the idea that that survivors of such a near completely fatal pandemic as portrayed in ED Day really would help each other, and take care of each other, and get on with rebuilding their lives and society, as best they can.

As Paul, the leader character of ED Day, says in Chapter Two (or maybe Chapter Three), you can only sit around in your commandeered penthouse getting hammered on free 40 year old whiskey for so long before you want to get back to work and get busy doing something worthwhile. Get busy helping people.

But the world of ED Day is not going to be full of kindness and caring and sharing.

Far from it.

There's something going on outside of Sydney that none of them are even remotely aware of, but I think they're going to find out about it before we get too far into the story.

There are dark forces at work amongst the ruins of a once bustling Sydney society. And for many of those who survived the pandemic, the worst is a long way from over.


Writing the novel this way may prove to be a good idea, or an extremely bad one. Whatever. It will be a writing adventure and that's what I'm most interested in right now.

You can read more about why I'm doing this, and how it came about over at Your New Reality.

Or you can just go straight to the first chapter and start reading :

ED Day - Chapter One : The Silence In The City

Enjoy.