Creating Trinity

Just to set the scene a little. Trinity is a book project that I’ve been working on with a very dear friend of mine, Patrick Morgan, for several years now.

It feels quite surreal to say this, but you can actually order it now from book shops, or on Amazon! Here are some shamefully self-promotional links if you so wish to buy it having only ready those few words:

• Waterstones (Paperback)
• WH Smith (Paperback)
• Amazon (UK) (Paperback)
• Amazon (UK) (Kindle/E-book)
• Unbound (E-book)

ISBN: 978-1789650990

So the Story Begins…

I was curious to trace the very start of the journey that Patrick and I have gone on to create Trinity. As it transpires, it was an innocent email from Patrick waaaay back in July 2015, on my birthday as it happens.

Both of us were not in a great place at the time - a mixture of work and general life ‘stuff’. We’d obviously had a conversation around that time about when we tried, in our much younger years, to create a board game of ‘The Hobbit’. It was hugely ambitious, and sadly didn’t really amount to anything. But out of the blue Patrick emailed me about about an idea, linked to his love of toys - specifically Starcom.

Starcom were very well designed, clockwork space toys we both enjoyed playing with together in our pre-teen years. In the email he talked about how clever they were… and that maybe, with life being like it was at the time, I may wish to indulge him in thinking of what kind of toy we would create were we given free reign - how would they work, what would the backstory be… I feel slightly emotional reading it now, but in Patricks own words:

It feels quite eerie reading that initial email exchange, and how we started to quickly fire thoughts back and forward to each other. We talked about 3D printing prototypes for the toy concepts (which we did actually end up doing!) - but what is evident from those initial emails, is that the world that these new toys had to live in would have to be rich and interesting - there very much HAD to be a backstory!

Some of the most memorable toy lines from my youth: Star Wars, Transformers, He-Man, Mask, Starcom, Teenage Mutant Hero (or Ninja outside the UK) Turtles - had interesting back stories and came from imaginative worlds that served as a vivid playground to play in as a child.

The World of Trinity

The planet on which Trinity is set rotates very slowly - so you naturally have one half that is in perpetual sunlight, and intense heat, and another in perpetual darkness and freezing temperatures. It seemed a simple, but interesting, way to create very different locations for our toy factions to live - or have their origins. There is also the natural creation of ‘The Divide’ the strip that sits between these two extreme habitats, that the factions can fight over, or would be naturally richer in resources.

We worked a lot on the story and concepts for our toy line for quite some time. Patrick eventually prototyped elements of the toys in CAD, and purchased a 3D printer to make them tangible objects. Sadly the world of toy manufacture, and copyright seemed like a huge minefield when we looked more closely into the details behind it all. But over a pint, we both realised that the world we’d been building behind this flight of fancy toy creation had taken on a life of its own… and that is when Trinity was truly born.

The Writing Process

I will state very clearly that the actual writing of Trinity was very much all Patrick. The foreword of the book summarises it very nicely:

We did discuss trying to share the writing, alternating chapters and other ideas, but ultimately it worked far better with Patrick taking the lead and me being around to meet up to exchange thoughts on the progress, and have continuing input into the characters, world and story.

At the time Patrick started writing, Dropbox Paper was in beta, and I convinced him to use it over sending Word documents back and forth. This worked surprisingly well, and meant I could quickly look at any new work, and we could use the same place to discuss things and take notes for future story ideas and in-person catch-ups. In fact, Paper is still very much where the creation of Trinity continues to take place to this day.

It’s said that writing a book can be quite a solitary endeavor, but I think the co-operative dynamic that Patrick and I had worked really well. We could always work together if some areas of the story got too complex or needed to be reworked.

We also kept expanding the reach of where the ultimate narrative would go - and that has turned Trinity into a potential trilogy of stories… at the time of writing!

The first book is still a self contained story, but like all good trilogies, it unlocks more mysteries and bigger questions as it goes, so it should leave readers curious of the continuing narrative past the end of the first book.

I won’t go into too much detail of the story of Trinity, as I think it’s best if you experience that yourself… please see the links at that start of the article to find out more ;)

Getting Published

So, how did we go from two old friends exchanging emails to having a physical book that you can buy and hold? The arrival of e-publishing means that it’s very easy for people to self-publish if they wish to nowadays. Amazon offer a fairly frictionless method to do this via Kindle.

But Patrick was (quite rightly) adamant that if we were to get the book published, that it should be a physical book. It took quite some time to do research on how best to get a book published… agents were looked into, articles read… but ultimately Unbound was discovered.

Unbound are a crowdfunded book publisher. They have some prestigious names on their publications list too. But the fit seemed right, and their agreements on rights to the book and characters was a lot clearer and far less binding those of Amazon.

More importantly, Unbound provide the necessary expertise, access to experienced editors to review any successfully funded projects (a huge thank you to ours - Gary Gibson and Philip Purser-Hallard), as well as the typesetting, cover design and digital/physical publication. All you have to do is have your book accepted by them, and then get the right number of backers to fund the publishing.

In the latter half of 2018 we submitted the pitch (and current full draft of the book) to Unbound and waited…

We were delighted to hear in early January that Unbound wanted to pick up the book, and add it to their site so that people could pledge towards making it a reality. I will be honest that Patrick and I are by no means social networking gurus or crowd funding experts, but 135 supporters later, we were over 100% funded and on our way to having our book made a reality.

They say that everyone has at least one book in them. I could never claim that Trinity was mine, by any stretch of the imagination. Patrick has put countless extra hours of his time into something we’re both immensely proud of.

It is very strange that the story and characters that have been private between us until now are now on their way to fill the minds of so many people (well, 135 at least!). It will be equally strange but delightful to be able to talk to them about it too!

All I can say is that if a friend ever contacts you, asking you to indulge them in a side project, I’d recommend you jump in, with both feet… you never know where that journey may take you.

Just incase reading all that made you curious to read Trinity, here are those links once again!

• Waterstones (Paperback)
• WH Smith (Paperback)
• Amazon (UK) (Paperback)
• Amazon (UK) (Kindle/E-book)
• Unbound (E-book)

Happy reading!