Hexagon: A Coded Intelligences Novel
I have an open pen name I want to use, but it’s in-world and I don’t want to spoil it.
One of the many things I plan to finish up this summer (including a heap of scripts, bookbinding, world-building, a PhD application and reading for my MA) is a novel in my Coded Intelligences sci fi duology. Book one is called Hexagon while book two is currently/WiP as Echo Code and is a paraquel (a prequel-sequel, with two narrative tracks).
This is a standalone duology in my Deadname-established universe and has three points of view: a genius engineer with a physical disability who is determined to change the world, a nurse in a palliative care clinic with secrets, siblings and obsessions and a young woman who is constantly told she’s dying who wants a place in the world, whilst also falling in love with the Coded Intelligence of the title (who will also be appearing in my epic TBC—but probably a duology or trilogy—called The Directorate Series, following the rise and fall of a planet through the eyes of several members in the same family over different generations), whom she believes is like her: a sentient mind trapped in a broken, static body and so learns to code to try and free her.
I started this way back in 2017, I think, to send into a call for a survivor anthology; I wanted to write something about surviving against the darkest odds, the most horrible prognoses. The story wasn’t accepted but it kept nudging at me.
It’s been my major project over the summer, simply because it’s so close (like 20k) to being done. I’m currently editing it for consistency while I wait for the ending to magically come to me. At least that’s the plan and this has been a joyous but hard novel to write. A lot of the additions are things like connections, foreshadowing and a consistently consistent narrator. At the same time, this has been a traumatic book for me to write as I’ve poured my pain, abuse and some really Nasty Shit™ into these pages and characters. At the same time, it’s really important for me to emphasise this idea of surviving and finding Chosen Family.
At the same time, it’s given me a chance to research some fascinating subjects from coding and engineering to how prosthetics work and their history. I’ve also gotten to create a world which is very much coloured by living in a rural British village during the eighties where religion and schooling when hand in hand, church and monotheism was mandatory and a lot of stuff managed to get swept under the rug because of the system of implicit trust which just doesn’t exist today. Also, as someone who spent a lot/most of their childhood in hospital or being a case study for medical students, there’s that too.
My main protagonist, Teiru, is disabled (and in love with both a computer and her best friend) but she isn’t blind; rather it’s an illness which is an extreme fictionalised, species-locked form of a genetic disease I actually do have (but souped up to twenty and made so much more nasty). I’ve tried to base a lot of this in fact and real illnesses.
I won’t say much more now but I’m hoping to get this finished by the end of August and then sent to beta readers and a sensitivity specialist. This really has been a labour of love for me and I want to share it with the world, eventually, but it’s not quite ready yet.
