What is a Disability. Critiquing a Book. Science Fiction on Television.

New Article on DiVine

When researching an article on the definition of what a disability is I came across the surprisingly large statistic that one in five Victorians have a disability. That’s a million Victorians with disabilities. I did find it hard to believe, but the more research I did  the more disabilities I uncovered. My article “What is a Disability?” went up on the DiVine website yesterday. 

Critiquing.

I have just finished critiquing a non-fiction book on a friend’s marathon running feats. It details his journey from an unfit and unwell person to someone who ran many marathons and then ran up a mountain. Along the way he raised a lot of money for charity. It is very inspirational and taught me a lot, especially why marathon runners never look that happy when running.

The book was about 120,000 words and took me a few months to critique. This is the third full length book I have critiqued. One of them, Datura Highway, by Daniel King has been published. I am very much hoping marathon runner Chris Pavey’s book also gets published. 

Science Fiction I Have Been Watching.

I just finished watching the last episode of Caprica, which was cancelled after its first season. What a shame. Caprica was a prequel to Battlestar Galactica and basically tells the story of who developed the cylons and why they went to war against humanity. The series took some patience to get into, unlike Battlestar which had the excellent hook of humanity being all but devastated at its start.

At the end of the last episode of Caprica it had ten minutes of what they hoped would occur in the next season. It showed such things as how and why the “skin jobs” where created and how the cylons became religious. It looked very interesting and entertaining, but it was not to be. The series was cancelled and science fiction lost a potential classic.

I have also been watching Regenesis on FX on Foxtel. It’s a low budget Canadian series that is set in their version of the CDC. It has a continual story line which began with terrorists releasing an ebola type plague. In episode three, the last episode I watched, someone claimed to have cloned Jesus Christ. That story line has all sorts of possibilities. How will churches react? What if the clone decides to be a Buddhist? I am looking forward to watching more.

My Novel Manuscript.

I have just started chapter forty-seven of Jack Logan, Astronaut. I have written 93,450 words and still have another 30,000 words to go at least. At the moment I am thinking I will be cutting a lot of words from the earlier chapters. Although they are full of intrigue as the main character tries to cope with his new surroundings, they lack some of the tension of the later chapters.