Aurora- a New Novel

It's been a long time since I've seriously written any long fiction. My second novel Rockall was published as a book in 2004 and since then I've produced a second and third edition of it online, see: http://hpanwo-bb.blogspot.co.uk/2009/02/rockall-chapter-1.html. After that I have written some short stories and a bit of poetry, as you can see here on Ben's Bookcase if you scroll down. The last complete piece of prose I posted was the story Ouija, see: http://hpanwo-bb.blogspot.co.uk/2014/08/ouija.html; that was last year. I hadn't planned to do another novel, although I've been making a half-hearted attempt with The Obscurati Chronicles, some of which I'm very pleased with, see: http://hpanwo-bb.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/the-obscurati-chronicles-part-16_25.html. I will finish it one day... honest. Then a few days ago I was listening to a recent interview with the Exopolitical activist Stephen Bassett and he said something very interesting. He was discussing the beginning of what he calls the "truth embargo", meaning the cover up of the presence of extraterrestrials. According to him it took place on the 8th of July 1947 at the press conference in General Ramey's officer at Fort Worth, Texas USA when the fake weather balloon story was initiated in order to suppress the reality of the Roswell Incident, see here from about 1.35.00: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfnwqSeR_fE. At one point he says: "... To write a book in which Roswell ends up triggering Disclosure in 1947 and describe the rest of the 20th century after that. I'm sure somebody will do it, but not me..." As I listened it struck me all of a sudden, why don't I do that? I emailed Steve and told him my intentions and he was very supportive. So I dug out one of those old blank exercise books that I've been storing in my desk drawer for the years and got to work. That was just two days ago and I've really got into the flow. I've already done several thousand words, and I have the entire first chapter plotted out in note form. The kind of fiction Steve is talking about is known as "alternative history". This is a story set in an imaginary world that is based on our own although its backdrop is that some event in the past happened differently to how it actually did. Good examples are Robert Harris' Fatherland which is set in the 1960's, but in an alternative historical setting in which Nazi Germany prevailed through World War II. Kim Stanley Robinson's The Years of Rice and Salt explores how the world would have developed if European civilization had been completely destroyed in the Middle Ages by the Black Death. One alternative history takes the form of a light-hearted TV sitcom, Comrade Dad, which is set in the Cold War, but one in which the communist bloc extended as far Great Britain, see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ytoSJadmlIg.

So the particular alternative history in question begins in New Mexico USA in 1947. That's a problem because the setting is a place I've never been to in an era long before my birth. I'll need to do a lot of research to make it authentic and will probably need some help from others; in the meantime I'm flying along by guesswork and the Internet. I've never written a historical novel before, so bear with me. As creative writing teachers say: "Don't get it right, get it written!" Steve calls the UFO cover-up the "truth embargo"; he has his own terminology for most things. According to him its advent can be timed very precisely to that day, 8th of July 1947. The Roswell Daily Record newspaper published a headline article entitled "RAAF captures Flying Disk on Ranch in Roswell Region". This was based on an official press release by the local air base, however it seems that immediately afterwards a different decision was made higher up the chain of command and a second press release was organized later that day by General Ramey of the Eighth Air Force explaining that the "flying disk" was nothing more than a weather balloon and that the local intelligence officer, Major Jesse Marcel had made a mistake. The rest is history... real history. My job is to change that history. I'm going to have to imagine exactly what Steve proposed, that after the initial press release from the RAAF, the decision was made not to cover it up. In other words we had Disclosure right then and there. What would be different? What would be the same? It's not an easy assignment, but I'm capable I think. In fact I'm well underway. I'll publish the first sample chapter on Ben's Bookcase when I've got it presentable. This will probably not be exactly like the first chapter as it will appear in the finished book, but it will give you an idea and hopefully encourage you to read the actual book when I've finished it. I gave it the working title of Aurora- a novel of Disclosure; however I've now decided on Roswell Rising.