98 chapters

Sky Waves, my next novel, has an odd structure. The chapters will come at you out of strict linear order, but storylines as played out in linked chapters are in linear order. Each chapter is connected to the one preceding and the one following, just as people here in Newfoundland and Labrador are often connected to one another. The chapters are short and should feel like listening to sky waves, those AM broadcasts you can pick up at night from places you could never pick up during the day. And there are 98 chapters, because this novel is also a drew – that is, a row of 98 meshes in a fishing net. Historically the novel goes from Marconi on Signal Hill in 1901 to the death of Pope John Paul II in 2005. It has an ensemble feel, several narrators and narrative consciousnesses, which is refreshing to me after suffocating under first-person narrator Josh Bozeman in Double-blind. The trick with Sky Waves now is to knit the chapters together – knit the drew – so it actually makes sense to someone besides me. Slow. Steady. Lamplight.