Sometimes on my travels around writerland, I find people who are not bogged down in a mire of worry about sales. Sometimes, that is because I find people who are bestsellers. Sometimes I meet guys like J.W. who are starting out in the business and have great books and great publishers and it inspires me. I wanted to be the first to run articles on this guy- his book The Gold Slaves has found itself a home at a publishing house and will soon be with you. Guess who got extracts for you to read? ME! Don’t say I don’t give you anything, guys!
The book is The Gold Slaves and the writer is J.W. Northrup– a newly discovered author with so much to say. Who is Jim Northrup? I asked Jim that question, and he thought for a moment. “I have spent much of my life studying the human mind and spirit,” he finally said. “Of course, I am not a professional– I am just a free spirit and much of my understanding comes from observation.” Pondering for a bit, he smiled and finalised his answer. “I am a free spirit.” J.W has taken all his observational skills and placed all his learning into the creation of characters. The Gold Slaves is the end result of his many years as a student of people. “How did you get into the world of writing, Jim?” I asked. “I began writing in the mid 80s,” J.W reminisced. “Back then, I was literally writing as a professional calligrapher.”
J.W. is by trade a designer, a man who creates images. Now he has taken his creative talents and written a book. “Where do you find the inspiration to write fiction, J.W?” I watched as my friend thought for a second, and finally he answered. “My fictional stories are always based upon an important social theme; but rather than being dogmatic and philosophic, I create a story that is interesting and add to it hyperbole and humor.”
The Gold Slaves is about the people of “Space” who believe they live in a hollow pocket in an otherwise solid universe. They are tunneling through this solid universe following a golden path that will lead them to the fabled “Nirvana” – a world of infinite space and light. When they put their gold in the God’s Chamber as an offering to the gods, they are rewarded with food. There are Spinners that burrow through the universe until they strike space, then recede into their burrows and eat the smoke produced by the people and emit oxygen.
Obviously we, the people on the surface, who are “in the know,” realize that these are simply brainwashed miners unknowingly working for a mining company. They are Slaves – Gold Slaves. Then two of the miners accidentally find a way to the surface and to freedom from their underground trap. But who is really trapped? The Gold Slaves’ trap is obvious. It’s easy to see material barriers, but it’s impossible for the people on the surface to “see” how they are trapped by the barriers of their irrational philosophies and ideas. Thus, Gold Slaves have something to offer more valuable than gold.
The Gold Slaves is a book filled with social commentary and has already been picked up by a publisher. It will be on release next month and it will entertain you– I think it will really make you think.
J.W. has a second book on the way and, outside of writing, his hobbies include skiing, rock-climbing, fly-fishing, and he has run a dozen marathons– including the Boston Marathon – all of which serve as inspiration for humorous stories. Jim Northrup is a name to remember.
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The Gold Slaves
Writers will tell you that characters make books. J.W. has given Novel Ideas exclusive extracts describing two of his major characters…
Evil “Dr Ratburn”
But Ratburn sees life through a single memory – suppressed in a fog of sub consciousness – and the pain and the emotions contained in memory are more real than reality. The memory IS reality. For Ratburn, the past has become the present and the present, a continually reoccurring past, condensed into a single memory of an incident of paralyzing, incomprehensible terror and overwhelming betrayal. And it will never let him rest because it is continually happening right now – stimulated by everything he observes and anything he feels.
The memory is telling him that “they” must be destroyed and it will haunt him until they are crushed and cowed into submission. And they are everyone.
In reality “they” are long gone, but for Ratburn they are right here, right now – part of a distant past that never leaves the present.
“We all see the present through a collage of thousands of different memories, like eyeglasses that adjust your vision, and the eyeglasses are coated with memories and the memories color and combine with what you see before you.”
“Look at that! The laws of evolution are being violated. ‘Survival of the fittest’ is being replaced with ‘Help the needy.’ Needy brains don’t need help! Needy brains need to be dead! How else are we to purge the species of unviable brains?”
He is also a paranoid psychotic with a purpose to destroy all life in the universe.
But Ratburn does not recognize this purpose because he does not recognize life. To Ratburn life is nothing other than the biological definition of “organic”. Therefore the life he destroys – the life force, the spirit – does not exist and so the evil purpose does not exist and the horrendous crimes that he commits daily, likewise, do not exist.”
And now, the introverted Wayne Hardy
Does pixel radiation ruin your eyes? Will I develop a hunchback sitting at this desk 8 hours a day? Will I be a blind hunchback when I finally reach retirement age in…? Oh god, 34 more years to go. 34 years! Sounds like a damn prison sentence.
As usual, every answer is just another personality flaw that leads to more questions and more negative answers. Wayne can feel the vicious cycle beginning again, but he can’t stop it. It is just getting too hard to stop any more. And the answers to the question of why he doesn’t do something about his life keep coming up, adding more weight, more flaws, more heavy mental clouds. Finally the gravity of the answers reach critical mass and like a black hole he feels himself introverting into oblivion.
He hadn’t failed to note that she said “mine” – not “ours.” He’d suddenly felt like a sperm donor, not a husband. That was the beginning of the end of a marriage he’d realized then was doomed from the start. She was going to dump him as soon as they had their first child. She and her father were obviously two of a kind and as he lay on top of her and the bearskin rug, he realized that the woman he was having sex with now was not the woman he thought he made love to last night in the kitchen.
“Where did the dreams go? Who took them away? Maggie? The counselors? No way, only one person, only one power in the entire universe could destroy Wayne Hardy’s dreams – that’s Wayne Hardy.
Wayne, the black hole and most powerful dream-wrecker in the universe feels himself collapsing into the dark mass of past failures.
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