The early eighties were remarkable, to me anyhow. Not only did my fascination with science fiction grind into high gear, but there was an explosion of new and modern genre films that hit the scene at around that time, in particular, Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner many having been influenced by film-makers from a bygone era, and more importantly, by novels penned by hardcore science fiction authors, such as Philip K Dick, just a decade earlier.
Continue reading “PKD”
After I published “A Hostile Takeover” I was exploring ideas for a second book. At some point, I entertained the thought of adapting one of my screenplays that had been sitting on the shelf, collecting dust for over a decade. How easy. The basic story and material were there. All I had to do was tweak this, rewrite that, so I committed to writing it, setting a target to keep it short and simple.
The screenplay was called ‘The Bad Samaritan’ and it was turned into a guerilla film back in 1999 by me and a few associates. Its one and only release was at the 2001 Melbourne Film Festival, and it’s been buried ever since. I felt it was a natural step for a novel to come out of it.
In hindsight, I was naive about how easy it would be. In my writing experience, nothing goes down as planned. With me stories evolve, ideas get bigger, themes dig deeper. And when I decided to turn what was originally a serial killer horror thriller into a serial killer science fiction horror thriller, I entered a world of hurt.
The original story idea still resonated with me, enough for me to decide to revisited it again. The challenge being; how do I take this to another level?
Hence, The Blood Ring was born.