And so it begins. Welcome to Pollen.

I was in a shop a couple of days ago, and my eye was drawn to a display of greetings cards and prints. There were some beautiful and unique drawings and paintings, by local artists. My wife bought a couple of them for relative’s birthday’s and I dithered about one in particular.

While I looked at the picture, I had a feeling of Deja Vue. Because I had a pretty good idea of what was coming.

My stories all start with an idea. It might be a comment that I’ve overheard, a dream or an image that I’ve glimpsed. Whatever it is, it plants a seed in my head and a part of my mind goes into some sort of overdrive.

Within a few days, I’ll start to see pictures in my head, connected to my original thought. These will gradually coalesce into a narrative, which I won’t see any more of than what’s happening at the time. It’s a bit like watching a film, on a screen in your head. At this point, my job is simply to write it all down, scene by scene, as it plays out.

There’s no guarantee that I will get a full novel out of what I see. It’s quite possible that whatever process is responsible for sending me these images will stop. I might get a short story or it might just join my collection of part-finished work. At some time in the future, it could all pick up again from where it left off, I really can’t predict what’s going to happen.

To give you some clue, I had the first idea for the adventures of Dave Travise in 1979. I actually finished the first book in 2012. At no point in the process did I know what was going to happen next, until I saw it.

Because of the card, I have a sneaking suspicion that the creative process is starting again. I’m not saying anything about what the picture was, it might bear no resemblance to what finally appears.

Here’s what I’ve got so far.

Welcome to Pollen.

Pollen is the repository, a planet where everything that was in danger of extinction on Earth was sent to survive. Initially, Pollen was a barren world, with no life to speak of. After the planetary engineers had finished with it, Pollen became the last safe home of the whales, the bees and everything else that mankind had taken to the brink.

Scientists on Pollen managed these creatures as a penance for mankind’s appetite for extinction, paid for by the very people that had done so much to kill them.

Pollen was a closed world, unless you worked for TPP you would never walk on its surface.

But Pollen wasn’t just the success story that everyone was so proud of.

There was a lot more going on behind the scenes.

As we were about to find out.

I’m very excited to see where this goes.

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