DAVID BARRIE
Friday, 25th November 2011. On being stillborn.
The next Franck Guerin novel (still burdened with the code name FG4, as I haven't come up with a decent title yet) suffered two false starts (each about 25 000 words long) before I finally hit on a plot and a bunch of characters I was happy with. Which has left the cast of the abandoned versions in a form of limbo. What will become of the urbane Mikhail Demidov, the high-tech tycoon who fled Moscow's red-in-tooth-and-claw capitalism for its more sedate Parisian version? What of Yann Cloarec, formerly of the Foreign Legion, now Demidov's head of security and a man with disturbing ties to ultra-nationalistic fringe groups? What of Viktor Sokolov, Demidov’s eminence grise, a man who speaks not a word of French (Little wonder I dropped him! How on earth was I going to pull off a character with whom Franck could not communicate?)?
I reckon they'll just remain where they lie – preserved in a digital file like prehistoric insects in amber – until I finally get round to clearing them off my hard drive.
Curiously enough, although none of the above characters made it into the final version, I hung onto all of the locations I had been planning on using (the Hôtel Menier on the edge of the Monceau park, the Ariane tower at La Défense, ...). Which I suppose makes sense – you don't have to live in a city as old as Paris to know that buildings easily outlive people.
The next Franck Guerin novel (still burdened with the code name FG4, as I haven't come up with a decent title yet) suffered two false starts (each about 25 000 words long) before I finally hit on a plot and a bunch of characters I was happy with. Which has left the cast of the abandoned versions in a form of limbo. What will become of the urbane Mikhail Demidov, the high-tech tycoon who fled Moscow's red-in-tooth-and-claw capitalism for its more sedate Parisian version? What of Yann Cloarec, formerly of the Foreign Legion, now Demidov's head of security and a man with disturbing ties to ultra-nationalistic fringe groups? What of Viktor Sokolov, Demidov’s eminence grise, a man who speaks not a word of French (Little wonder I dropped him! How on earth was I going to pull off a character with whom Franck could not communicate?)?
I reckon they'll just remain where they lie – preserved in a digital file like prehistoric insects in amber – until I finally get round to clearing them off my hard drive.
Curiously enough, although none of the above characters made it into the final version, I hung onto all of the locations I had been planning on using (the Hôtel Menier on the edge of the Monceau park, the Ariane tower at La Défense, ...). Which I suppose makes sense – you don't have to live in a city as old as Paris to know that buildings easily outlive people.