I hurried the students out the door, found pen and paper and started madly scribbling notes. I only remember the sudden brightness in my mind, the wonderful bursting of images, story ideas and characters. He certainly had no idea the effect it would have on me. Possibly he had explained Christmas this way to his own kids. We were finishing a class with a discussion about Christmas and the way different countries view it, and a Korean man said this, “Santa can’t possibly deliver all the presents the night before Christmas, so he hires a network of retired postmen to help him.” Possibly this man had carried that thought around with him for many years. I was teaching English as a Second Language to a group of overseas adults in a Perth ESL school in mid December a few years ago. I can tell you the exact time and place that the novel tumbled into my head, almost fully formed, with a bunch of plot elements I would never have thought of otherwise. It was the stuff of fireworks and every writerly cliche you can imagine. Nine Planets was miraculous in its inspiration. I abandoned Untitled on the spot and have never gone back.
I never saw it coming but, when it did and in the most incandescent ten minutes of my writing life, it changed me completely, immediately and wonderfully. You don’t escape unchanged from such things.
At the time, I was completely happy with my writing life and not even considering a new path.īut then Nine Planets ambushed me and, believe me, it was a head-on, take no prisoners, full body armour ambush. I loved this thing, dreamed about it, pondered it as I took the dog for a walk, spent hours and days working out plot problems and character arcs. At the time that it happened, I was deep into book three (still untitled) of a high fantasy tetralogy that had consumed me for many years. My favourite bit about Nine Planets would have to be the inspiration. And his only ally is a manic assassin sent to extract the secret and kill him. Pursued, betrayed, Blackwell has twelve days to unlock his Ninth Planet and prevent terminal worldwide suicide. Eight he can see, although he does not understand them, but the impenetrable ninth is the secret that two opposing and hidden brotherhoods have been seeking for nearly two millennia. Without memory or identity, all he has are nine random images. Peter Blackwell wakes from a coma into a world he doesn’t recognize. In the world of despair, Father Nick’s Day is the only hope… Greg Byrne is joining us today with his novel Nine Planets.
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