Apologies for the lack of updates, but I’m thrilled to report that the novel continues to progress nicely. I’d set a target of 50 thousand words by year’s end and am on track to exceed that by a little bit.

Naively, I’d estimated that the story would come in as a fairly short one at 60-70 thousand words. It’s become apparent this is more a 100-120 thousand word piece of work, so I’m doubtful 2015 will see a release taking into account revisions. No-one will be happier than I to be wrong on that count.

Another small snippet from the novel. It alludes to some big societal changes that occur between the two time periods (2016 and 2036) that the novel is primarily set in:

The Switch Off period played out over years, and such timeframes tend to benefit those trying to conserve the status quo. As much as there had been a backlash against technology, those who had created it weren’t about to destroy their work unless it couldn’t be avoided. Engineers, scientists, software developers, academics and a not insignificant cohort of the world’s general population could see the potential for a range of initiatives would be dramatically affected by a reduction in technology use. Medical research, improving agricultural processes and environmental monitoring were three obvious examples where a fundamental shift in attitude to technology could actually cost thousands or even million of lives.

Those working for government-funded research institutions had the longest lead time to save critical information, as the grinding inefficiency of decision-making meant detailed secretion efforts could be undertaken. Some were collaborative, others individual and unfortunately none were comprehensive outside of very specialised areas of expertise. In the corporate sector it was more difficult to make altruistic gains in data secretion, as intellectual property protection had become as rigorous as biological warfare safeguards. This obsession with protecting intellectual property did create a benefit in that it made it significantly harder for key information to be destroyed, and provided greater barriers to confiscation when Governments started their control measures.