Fire On The Water
A Companion To Mary Shelley's
Frankenstein
Fire On
The Water: A Companion To Mary Shelley's Frankenstein
By P.J.
Parker
Category: Drama
Publication Date: 12th December
2013
ISBN paperback: 978-1-61213-196-2
ISBN
ebook: 978-1-61213-197-9
Book Summary
Rachel, a young American biographer researching the
life of Mary Shelley in Montreux, Switzerland, is entangled and consumed by
the escalating threads of her investigation. Shards of Shelley’s creation are
exhumed from the past. Precious memories are hacked and sutured to the
unthinkable. The unblemished flesh of the one she loves is stripped back to
reveal what lies beneath—aspects of Frankenstein incised and ripped
from the nineteenth century and transplanted into her
own.
Through a landscape of archival documents, the
contents of a trunk unopened for generations, and a spiraling progression of
dismembered cadavers and uncertainties, Fire on the Water: A Companion to Mary Shelley’s
Frankenstein interweaves Rachel’s searchwith the plot of Frankenstein and the horrific
occurrences of the summer of 1816 when Mary Shelley dared to dip her quill
into the ink of her darkest of waking dreams.
The truth is given
life.
P.J. Parker
P.J. Parker was
born and raised in rural Australia. With a bachelor of science in architecture
from the University of New South Wales, he has traveled and lived extensively
around the world, focusing on cultures of historic interest and buildings of
architectural significance before transitioning into a career as a fraud analyst
and programmer with a leading international financial institution. An avid
reader and researcher, P.J. undertakes his writing with a passionate and
exacting attention to detail.
Praise for Fire On The Water
The impossible has been done... a really great
novel inspired by a really great novel.
-ARC Review,
Goodreads
There were some particularly great moments in
this story. Times when your own heart is beating as fast as that of the character
you are experiencing things with. I loved that the author balanced moments of
excitement with a deep back story of Shelley's research and composition of her
famed novel.
-ARC Review, Goodreads
Publication
Date: 12th December 2013
Sales Information
Now we get into P.J.'s head a little!
1. How does Fire On The Water: A Companion
to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein translate the horror and underlying
social message of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1816) into
the modern world?
The horror and underlying social messages of Mary
Shelley’s Frankenstein are as relevant today as they were
in 1816. Fire on the Water: A Companion to Mary Shelley’s
Frankenstein reveals that the two timelines are little removed and
in many ways nothing has changed. Both are periods of miraculous scientific
advances, prejudices against gender and identity, the unending search for the
truth and meaning of Life. The dread of death—whether by accident, murder or
His will—is pervasive. All resolve to a landscape wherea creator and acreated can easily disrupt the
delicate balance of social mores whenever they surface from the amalgamation
of science, identity and truth.
First and foremost, like Mary
Shelley’s Frankenstein, Fire on the Water: A
Companion to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is a horror
story—exposing the horror of the world in which both Mary Shelley and we all
live.
2. What are the underlying messages in Mary's book and
do you think they are still revenant
today?
The prejudices that society holds against the accepted, the
unknown or unusual can destroy a life. We have all created
something—whether a story, a drawing, a home, a career, an identity, a life.
And each is unique and should be respected, no matter who or how it was
created.
To create a thought, a society, a world where a woman does not
have the same rights as a man, and not all men hold the same rights as those
who deem themselves above him . . . Whether fashioned by procreation, by
science, by wonder, or by ink, is not every woman a woman and every man a
man? Regardless of how they recognize themselves by origin, gender,intelligence, or inclination, are they not deserving of whatever they settle
their minds upon—whatever they create for
themselves?
When Life is available, it needs to be taken and
lived.
3. Would it be possible to create a monster with current
technology? What do you think that monster would
be?
In 1816 the scientific tests with electricity (or animal
electricity as it was referred to) raised many questions about its
relationship to Life—whether it
was Life itself or merely the means by
which Life animated the human body. The
experimentations of Monsieur Aldini on cadavers at Newgate Prison—causing
the dead to spasm and jerk and sneer at their executors—raised more
uncertainties and questions than answers to
what Life actually was. It also raised ideologies on whether
man had the right to tamper with what He had
created.
In the last two-hundred years science and knowledge has evolved
ten-thousand fold. We have a greater understanding of the muscular,cardiovascular and nervous systems of the human body. We can join sinew to
sinew, nerve to nerve, and artery to artery. We can produce artificial blood,
skin and organs to enhance and prolong life. The organs and severed limbs of
the dead have been successfully joined to those that still hold onto life. The
face of a cadaver has given new hope to one whose own was irreparably
destroyed by cancerous growths. The organ trade is booming. Driving licenses
register willing humans as donors. Reports on newscasts and on the internet
surface with regularity regarding the unsanctioned use of body parts to create
something more.
Would it be possible for Frankenstein’s monster to be created in
the twenty-first century? More to the point, if they already walk with us,
would they be monsters or simply human beings that are glad to have life—to
have a chance—to be happy?
4. What are the most important themes you want the
reader to get out of your book?
Fire on the Water: A Companion to Mary
Shelley’s Frankenstein is about trust.
It is about stripping away prejudices, social injustices, and unfounded
misconceptions so that we see each other for what we truly are—human beings
attempting to survive as best we can, to achieve our goals, to be ourselves in a
world that is not always kind.
5. What was your research process for your
novel?
For the last few years I have been researching and writing a novel
with working title America: Túwaqachi. That work follows a
single family line through thirty-seven thousand years of North American
history. It has been research intensive with reading thousands of pages of dry
archeological dig data. Especially in the pre-Columbian chapters not a sentence
could be written without extensive investigation and clarification. I needed a
break from research of any kind.
The concept of Fire on the Water: A Companion to Mary
Shelley’s Frankenstein had been nudging at the back of my mind
and I wanted to dive into it without any research—pure imagination, without
any kind of plan of where the story would take me. I didn’t even know that
Mary Shelley would be in the work. It wasn’t until I typed the last word of the
first chapter that I wondered what Mary was doing. She pretty much demanded
to be in the novel. And so the research began. Months of trawling original
source websites and documents, studying in libraries and wandering through
book stores gave me a solid understanding of her life and the society in which
she lived. The sociology, theology and science of her time are woven
through Frankenstein and Fire on the Water: A
Companion to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein to the point where the
original masterpiece insisted on being mirrored in the new work. Mary’s own
thought and writing process intrigued me. How an eighteen year old girl could
be enlightened by the horrors and issues surrounding her and place them
together for a ‘ghost story’ competition to create the first work of science
fiction is astounding.
6. How did Mary Shelley's personal life impact upon her
novel?
Mary’s mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, was a champion of human and
female rights. Her father, William Godwin, was a political philosopher. Their
impact on Mary’s own thoughts of freedom and rights is captured within both
the original work and the companion
piece.
Mary and her fellow tourists (Percy Shelley, Lord Byron, Doctor
Polidori and Mary’s step-sister Miss Claire Clairmont) fled to Europe to escape
the strictures of Mother England. In Switzerland they could be true to
themselves, their own desires and way of life without retribution or
scandal.
But Mary also knew the wretchedness of losing a child—unable to
give life to something she held so dear, so desperately wanted to
resurrect.
8. Why did you write this
novel?
I wrote this novel because it demanded to be written to re-iterate
Mary’s own thoughts for a new century in which the same prejudices
exist.
9. Who is the target audience for your
book?
The target audience is those readers who know prejudice and
injustice, who have been denied any small part of their own identity and worth
to society. Fire on the Water: A Companion to Mary Shelley’s
Frankenstein is written for those that are willing to be frightened
into recognizing the truth.
Personal Questions.
1. What is a usual day in the life of P.J. Parker:
My usual day starts at 7am to get up and catch
the jitney into New York where I work for a major financial organization. Eight
to nine hours analyzing fraud, writing code to detect or prevent, creating
detection processes and then back on the jitney to home—mentally exhausted.
I have all the best intentions of writing every night but it just does not happen.
Somewhere in there my stories and characters are evolving for the next three
books. Sentences and characteristics form, ready for when they need to be
written down. At the moments that I am able to sit and write, the words gush
out as fast as I can type. Version after version has already done the rounds in
my head and any chapter or sentence refuses to be written until it is ready for
a good first draft that I and my characters are happy
with.
2. What’s your favorite TV show:
My favorite TV show is Bones. I admire the character
of Temperance ‘Bones’ Brennan with her straight forwardness and logical
outlook. Temperance sees the world based on a vast knowledge of
humanity and science without the artificial filters of society. The same
simplistic and blunt observation comes through in my work. My chapters are
usually very short, to the point, with no waffle. I'm not really sure how to
waffle.
3. Favorite novel:
At the moment my favorite novel is Mary
Shelley's Frankenstein. The story format is intriguing, the
underlying social commentary still relevant and much of the prose
breathtaking—especially when Mary breathes life into her creation. Mary has a
wording that is different from her contemporaries—very much that of a
woman of the new age daring to enter and conquer a literary world dominated
by men.
4. Best hero and heroin of all time:
Nothing could come close to Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy. As a
couple, even with their prejudices and pride, they are immortal. I know that a
little bit of Miss Bennet and Mr. Darcy have rubbed off on two of my main
characters in Fire on the Water: A Companion to Mary Shelley’s
Frankenstein. Their sensibilities and ideals are hard to
ignore.
5. </
span>Greatest monster ever created (besidesFrankenstein):
The greatest monster ever created (besides Frankenstein) would
be the one that is closest to reality without the need of the paranormal. For me
it is Hannibal Lector—rooted in the depths of our most frightening nightmares
but so very, very real. The same can be said for the monster(s)
in Frankenstein and Fire on the Water: A
Companion to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Despite their origins, they are
real flesh and blood with underlying motives that may be seen as good or
evil.
6. If you could live in any time period what would it
be:
Every age is a new age with its own excitement and uncertainties.
I want to live in them all and perhaps that is why I am a
writer.
7. Favorite food:
Could anything possibly be better than a handmade pizza and a
glass of Pino Grigio while overlooking Lake Lugano, Switzerland? Perhaps a pot
of fondue and a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc at a sunny, lakeside restaurant in
Montreux, Switzerland.
8. Biggest fear:
My biggest fear is not being able to let my imagination have its
own way, and not being able to let my characters lead me to where they want
to go.
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