10 things you didn’t know about Beyond Neanderthal.
- Beyond Neanderthal was written and published months before the Global Financial Crisis manifested, but in Chapter 1 it was made clear that a crisis was coming and why.
- The hilarious scene where Patrick tells Samantha about his experiences on the island of Skiathos actually happened to my wife, Denise and me when we were there on holidays – of course, the way Patrick told it was embellished with author’s license.
- The story’s insights into Muslim thought processes were partially facilitated by the fact that, for many years, I sat on the Board of Directors of a Muslim family owned business. It was franchisor of kebab stores and it brought me into direct contact with a diverse range of the family’s friends and business associates.
- The scene with Tara and Patrick flying through the Bermuda triangle describes reported physical results that were claimed to be demonstrated and photographed in laboratory experiments by a Canadian by the name of John Hutchison. Knowing about these experiments I scoured the internet looking for reports regarding the Bermuda Triangle and discovered that every one of Hutchison’s reported experiments had at least one matching story that had been reported by pilots who had flown through the Triangle.
- The house that Patrick and Tara stayed at in the Samana peninsular actually exists. I wrote to the owner of this holiday home and asked him about terms. The owner – who was an ex airline pilot living in France – was a great help in providing me with details of life in that area.
- A book called Noah’s Ark and the Ziusudra Epic , by Robert M Best, “presented itself” to me as if synchronously whilst I was writing Beyond Neanderthal. It offered a fascinating view of the Sumerian numbering system that existed at the time of Great Floods that geological research has validated occurred across the planet about 5,000 years ago. Using that numbering system – instead of the decimal system we have today – Best recalculated the ages of all the patriarchs from Noah and before him (including Methuselah) and recalculated the year in which Adam was supposedly born as 3,113 BCE; which happened to coincide exactly with the start date of the Mayan Calendar. I wrote to Best to ask about it and he had never heard of the Mayan Calendar. He said it was “a coincidence”.
- Speaking of coincidences, Beyond Neanderthal’s original name was “Blue Amber”. A friend and ex-mentor of Denise’s in matters relating to “The Higher Self” had suggested I let my proposed novel be about Blue Amber. I had never heard of Blue Amber and only after I started researching it did the idea of the Bermuda Triangle come to me. As I already had an interest in “alternative energies” I saw how I would be able to craft a story that encompassed both subjects. Philosophical ruminations in my younger years presented me with tangential ideas, and the storyline evolved with other “coincidences” manifesting along the way.
- Denise was convinced that when I was “in the zone” of writing, I was actually connecting to my Higher Self. I don’t fully understand these things but I mention this because ideas just seemed to flow when I was in the zone. When that happened – which didn’t happen often, but often enough to be remarkable – it was almost as if I was channelling information.
- I knew that a particular scene was good if it “felt” right. Often I had to rewrite a scene more than once to achieve this outcome. Some parts of the book were written only once whilst others were written and re-written several times.
- My editor taught me a trick when she was editing the book. When I presented her with the completed manuscript she told me to go through it and highlight the entire manuscript in three colours: “Red” for what had to stay in the storyline on a not negotiable basis, “Orange” for what would be nice to have but not essential, and “Green” for stuff that, if was deleted, I wouldn’t even care. That enabled both me and her to see what was important from a reader’s perspective and made the job of editing much easier. She concentrated on making damned sure that the Red highlighted information was attractive and easy to read and she checked punctuation and sentence structure in the orange colour, often coming up with creative ideas for a scene. Green highlighted wording was treated with less microscopic attention and much of it was deleted.
There is an energy force in the world—known to the Ancients—that has largely escaped the interest of the modern day world. Why? There are allusions to this energy in the Chinese I-Ching, in the Hebrew Torah, in the Christian Bible, in the Hindu Sanskrit Ramayana and in the Muslim Holy Qur’an. Its force is strongest within the Earth’s magnetic triangles.
Near one of these–the Bermuda Triangle–circumstances bring together four very different people. Patrick Gallagher is a mining engineer searching for a viable alternative to fossil fuels; Tara Geoffrey, an airline pilot on holidays in the Caribbean; Yehuda Rosenberg, a physicist preoccupied with ancient history; and Mehmet Kuhl, a minerals broker, a Sufi Muslim with an unusual past. Can they unravel the secrets of the Ancients that may also hold the answer to the future of civilization?
About the Author:
In 1987, Brian and his young family migrated from South Africa to Australia where he was employed in Citicorp’s Venture Capital division. He was expecting that Natural Gas would become the world’s next energy paradigm but, surprisingly, it was slow in coming. He then became conscious of the raw power of self-serving vested interests to trump what – from an ethical perspective – should have been society’s greater interests.
Eventually, in 2005, with encouragement from his long suffering wife, Denise, he decided to do something about what he was witnessing: Beyond Neanderthal was the result; The Last Finesse is the prequel.
The Last Finesse is Brian’s second factional novel. Both were written for the simultaneous entertainment and invigoration of the thinking element of society. It is a prequel to Beyond Neanderthal, which takes a visionary view of humanity’s future, provided we can sublimate our Neanderthal drive to entrench pecking orders in society. The Last Finesse is more “now” oriented. Together, these two books reflect a holistic, right brain/left brain view of the challenges faced by humanity; and how we might meet them. All our problems – including the mountain of debt that casts its shadow over the world’s wallowing economy – are soluble.
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Genre – Thriller
Rating – MA (15+)
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Quality Reads UK Book Club Disclosure: Author interview / guest post has been submitted by the author and previously used on other sites.
