The End. It's done, at last. AURORA, that is.
I'm still fiddling and editing but I feel a bit like the cleaner sweeping the stage after an epic play. The characters have exited the stage and walked off into their futures - or not, having shuffled off their mortal coils, some of them. Well, 'shuffle' is a bit of an understatement for what happens to some of them but that's all I'm saying for now.
I miss them. I'm busy writing other things and planning the next book, yet I catch myself thinking about them all, wondering what they're doing now. Then I remember they're not real, and they're not doing anything at all 'now'. They're only imagined presences in an invented world of 2115 - but I've lived with this lot so long, they feel quite real to me.
It always surprises me that they feel real to other people. That is the magic of a book - my dream can become yours too. So I loved this animatic of THE WEAVE from Exodus on youtube, where Mara meets Fox. (The Weave is a crucial part of the story in Aurora too.) It's amazingly close to what I imagined. Thanks to the young students at Ravensbourne College who created it.
