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MORTAL HAPPINESS: A Blog Novel

Blog fiction, blook, desert, sleep disorder, Wales, war, Caucasus, journalism, mountains, refugees, Republic of Georgia, hermitage, Svaneti, medicine, icons, dark, golden fleece, military, Russia, redemption. A reflection on writing and publishing. All content copyright Hamid Z Hanssen, 2009.

Wednesday, 23 September 2009

Mortal Happiness: Contents


MORTAL HAPPINESS
BY HAMID Z HANSSEN



O thou, daughter of the ether
Appear to me from your father's garden
And if you may not promise me mortal happiness
Then frighten, O frighten, my heart

With something else.

J. Hoelderlin



CONTENTS


Narrative Outline

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Posted by Hamid Z Hanssen at Wednesday, September 23, 2009 No comments:
Labels: chapters, conflict, Contents Page, Hoelderlin, journalist, Michael Jones, mortal happiness, O thou daughter of the ether, Russians, Svaneti, title quote, wound
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hzhanssen@hotmail.co.uk

A Serialised Novel

Mortal Happiness is a completed work of fiction. Chapters can be posted until they're all out there, but without feedback that's not going to happen. If you want to keep on reading, then say so and the next chapter will appear.

Copyright: Hamid Z Hansssen 2009

APOLOGIES FOR PROBLEMATIC TEXT/DIALOGUE LAYOUT IN EARLY CHAPTERS.

Sept 10th 2009. Recent cut and pastes look fine, hope you find them more readable.

Remember, if you want to go on reading, you need to VOTE below! Writer always want feedback, my email address is right in front of you!

Do You Want To Go On Reading?

REFLECTION

Parallelling the novel itself is a history of Mortal Happiness; the concept, the writing, recognition, agents, publishers ...


IN THE BEGINNING ...

The outline of this story first appeared a long time ago during a journey from Hanoi to Halong Bay. The bus was full of tourists who didn't speak to each other. In front of me a Japanese guy slept while his head smacked off the window with every pot hole. Once some women working on the road threw stones and mud at the bus. It was January and very cold. The flat landscape beyond the windows was grey and misted. The windows of the bus steamed up and then there was nothing to see except the sleeping man's head hitting the glass over and over again. As the world outside the moving vehicle vanished, the internal world began, as it usually does, to expand. This was when the character of a man caught up in conflict first came to me, a man who was an outsider.

THEN

It was clear from the start that the external conflict, the wars, that the man would be in were almost a backdrop to the true conflict occurring within him. The reasons for these internal conflicts and how they manifested in his character emerged only slowly and changed from one plot possibility to another. At the same time, the parallel female character began to form. Without her, without each other, the human conflicts of the narrative would not resolve. The end of the story was there from the very start, a resolution of conflict and some kind of very personal redemption. How the plot would develop to reveal these things, that was another matter entirely ...

NEXT

While in Malibu, not long after Halong Bay, I was persuaded by a friend to write the planned novel as a screen-play. Being in S California the only kind of writing worth considering was screen-writing I was told. So, using a downloaded template the story began to take shape but in an entirely different form to what I'd imagined. While I pored over an atlas, trying to come up with the best location for the story, the friend juggled re-writing a script for De Niro with long conversations with Dominic Sena about action scenes. The whole experience had an unreal feel to it, which was in fact, the truth. When stumped for ways to create action I'd been put in front of the helicopter scene from Apocalypse Now.
In a few weeks the first draft was done. All along I'd known that the whole script idea was just an exercise, there was no way anyone was going to be interested in the very rough ideas sketched out in the draft. But it was fun to do and fun for a short while to feel part of the massive many-headed monster that is Hollywood. As we discussed all this one day, not long before I returned to London, the friend said, 'You realise of course that in the unlikely event your script were ever to be made it would take at least 5 years and by the time it hit the screen it would bear no resemblance at all to what you're holding in your hand. Everyone would have had a crack at re-writing it from hired hands to the producer and director.' At that moment I knew any thoughts I'd had about working on it as a screen-play for the UK market were out of the question. It was a novel, it had always been a novel. The fun was over and the real work was about to start.

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