41 - Sunday, October 15, 1989 - North Shore News

Students
raise
funds
PAGE 45

ts

Two rewrites later, NV novelist
supernatural

publishes tale of the

SECOND BOOK IN THE WORKS

FOR THE past five years, novelist Myles Murchison has
been immeised in a world of religious incantations, Central
American Indian myths, spiritualism and psychic phenom-

ena.

This single-minded dedication to
things supernatural has brought
the North Vancouver man both
good fortune and bad.

The good news is that Mur-
chison’s book, The Deuthless, was
published this summer by Ballan-
tine Books of New York — a
company that rarely works with
first-time authors.

There’s a dark side to every
story, however, as readers of his
book discover — and the dark side
to Murchison’s success was the
theft of his computer system
recently.

Not only did the thieves make
off with his computer and other
electronic equipment, they aiso
took the discs containing approx-
imately 250 pages of his second
novel, Fortunately, says Mur-
chison, he has print-outs of the
material, but he’s not looking
forward to retyping the pages of
copy.

“7 swore I wasn't going to have
to go through that again,’’ he rues,
referring to the work on his first
novel, The Deathless was written
on a typewriter — and rewritten
twice before it was published.

The trials and triumphs Mur-
chison experienced with his novel
are an exaniple of the ups and
downs authors usually encounter
in their profession. Having worked
on The Deazhiless for a couple of
years, Murchison decided to re-
write it — a year-long process —
after the manuscript was rejected
for the Seal Book award.

The revised manuscript was sent
around to a number of top
publishers, and Ballantine agreed

to publish it — on the condition
that it was rewritten again.
*“*That was fairly nerve-wrack-

ing,’’ reports Murchison. ‘*My
blood pressure went up and I was a
bear to be around."

The Deathless is now published
and on local bookstore shelves,
awaiting readers who have an in-
terest in history and the super-
natural.

The story follows a 19th century
female cthnographer’s danger-
laden mission to discover why her
scientist lover died a mysterious
death while researching the adven-
tures of the i6th century Spanish
explorer Ponce de Leon, his search
for the Fountain of Youth, his
battles with Florida's native Calusa
Indians, and the Calusa’s death
god, Kamiri.

The plot jumps from century to
century, visiting Cuba, Florida,
San Francisco and Vancouver, and
is backed up by a great amount of
factual, historical research.

“If you're telling a tale of the
fantastic, if you can bring authen-
ticity to the story through research,
the fantastic becomes more real,"’
says Murchison.

The world of myth and psyche
has become more real to Mur-
chison since writing The Deathless,
he says. ‘‘The more | deal with it,
the more it’s coming true to me....
The whole effort of the European
society is to find out ‘how?’
without looking at ‘why?’ I think
science moves God further and
further away from us.”’

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agg :

NEWS photo Hike Wakefield
NORTH VANCOUVER novelist Myles Murchison celebrated the publication of his first novel this summer, but
the work on his second book was cut short whee his computer was stolea, He's shown here back at work retyp-
ing the pages that were taken along with the equipment,

Currently a self-employed mar-
keling consultant by day, Mur-
chison is hoping that writing will
one day become a full-time career,
“but unless you get quite fortunate
and have an enormous success,
what normally happens is you have
io run three or four books before
you start 10 make your living at
it.’*

Until that time, Murchison in-
tends to continue work on the
companion book to The Deathless.

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