Dan Churach
Dansplaining Dan's Current Projects
I'm always getting ideas for storylines! Of course, most of the time, an idea dies at the inception stage, but once in a while, the inspiration grows into a full-fledged plot for a novel. Here is the latest work I'm doing on the next Churachian novel.
Cheers ,
Dan
This is the draft of a cover for SOLASTALGIA. When you look at the European Space Agency's Solar Orbiter photo (below) taken from inside Venus's orbit in 2020, you can see were the idea originated. That photo inspired me to put CLOUDS aside for a few months and dive straight into SOLASTALGIA. Just look at the cover of SOLASTALGIA and you will understand my artistic license using photos of Earth, Mars and Venus since they are all critical to the story. Ah, the brain works in very mysterious ways...
Read more Dansplaining SOLASTALGIA
Dansplaining SOLASTALGIA
Source: ESA
Wow! What a photo! The picture was snapped while the European Space Agency's Solar Orbiter looked back towards home from over 155 million miles (about 250 million kilometres) away. The spacecraft is part of a research project developed by the European Space Agency and launched by NASA in 2020. It circles our sun inside Earth’s orbit and its trajectory carries it over the sun’s poles and sometimes inside Mercury’s orbit. The Solar Orbiter spacecraft’s camera (the Heliospheric Imager) captured Venus, Earth, and Mars together on Nov. 18, 2020. The Sun is located on the right, outside the image frame to the right of Mars in this view.
When I first saw this photo in late January 2021, I was immediately reminded of Carl Sagan’s "Pale Blue Dot" poem. An earlier photo taken by NASA’s Voyager 1 Spacecraft on Valentine’s Day 1990 inspired him to write that epic poem. That photo captured a distant Earth seen through Saturn’s rings across some six billion kilometres (3.7 billion miles) of space. I reckon if that photo of Mother Earth could inspire one of my heroes, Carl Sagan, then for sure, the Solar Orbiter photo of Venus, Earth and Mars could inspire me. For that matter, all three of those planets - Venus, Earth and Mars - are at the crux of the storyline in EIGHT. I always knew I would write a sequel to EIGHT, though I thought it would come later. But now the Solar Orbiter's Heliospheric Imager photo has prodded me to start a new novel, SOLASTALGIA. It will pick up from where EIGHT left off.
I must post Sagan’s "Pale Blue Dot" here. I highly recommend you take the three minutes and click the link to hear him recite it on You Tube.
Dansplaining CLOUDS For release in late 2021
I'm already a quarter-to-third of the way into this novel, but am distracted by SOLASTALGIA (see above). That said, I will get back to CLOUDS in a few months. CLOUDS is only a working title, but the way the story is unfolding, it may be the final title of my next technothriller. I can at least give you some insight as to what I'm working on.
GenoBotics is a new start-up company developed by a couple of Western Australia researchers attempting to use the laws of physics integrated with biomolecular research to develop robotic devices that are as small as molecules. These nanobots can be used medically to deliver drugs to precisely the right place within an individual’s body to help remedy disease. The best example of this technique is in the early stages of development today and will be used to allow oncologists to better treat cancer patients.
Caution: NOT a real nanobot!
Many modern pharmaceuticals intended to fight cancer are designed to interfere inside the targeted malignant cells and cause harm to their DNA. Naturally, the trick is to confine their therapeutic behaviour of the chemo drugs specifically to only the diseased cells making up the tumour. Enter nanorobotics and the guided attack on only unhealthy cells. Enough of the science for now.
GenoBotics shows much promise, but as often is the case with Australian research, the lack of seed money drives GenoBotics into a merger with Gunn Capital, a large California-based company keen on backing this cutting-edge research.
That's where CLOUDS is in January 2021 - to be continued after I put SOLASTALGIA out to the publishers.…
Nanobots at work in a bloodstream... Again, don't take the image too seriously, but it gives at least some idea of what GenoBotics is all about - manipulating VERY small bits within the human body..