Author Archives: Nathan Wilson

Billion Man Rapture Has A New Home

So I’ve decided to split my blog. As you guys may have noticed, the majority of my posts in this blog have been in relation to my Billion Man Rapture idea. I realize I’ve been thinking of the blog as specifically for the Billion Man Rapture project, which is not the case. I entirely intend to use it for blog posts about random topics and my other projects as the time reaches for me to work on them. So logically, I probably should give Billion Man Rapture a place of its own. So after days of trying to come up with a name for the new blog, strangely enough I got the epiphany to call it….http://billionmanrapture.wordpress.com/

Weird huh?

So far I simply transferred copies of my Billion Man Rapture related blog posts to their new home. There’s nothing new to be seen as yet, but that should change very soon hopefully. I’m still working out the details of what I will be posting there. So far the verdict is as follows.

Progress reports: I’ll be giving updates on the progress of my world building and character development as well as how far I’ve reached in writing the novel itself.

Story excerpts: There’ll be a few excerpts from the story that I think may whet readers’ appetites for more.

Promotions: When I get around to promoting Billion Man Rapture, you will be getting promotional posts from that blog.

Peripheral Events: Part of my strategy to get a feel for the universe I’m trying to create is to write short pieces that will not be included in the book, but will give the reader insights into what is going on outside of the story that may affect the in-story characters. They should help me to build my universe in a more fun way than writing pages and pages of details too.

So…run on over to http://billionmanrapture.wordpress.com/ and click Follow so you can get updates as they come!

One Lovely Blog Award

So…I’ve been nominated for the One Lovely Blog Award!

Now for my nomination acceptance speech…Yeah right!

1) Thank the one that nominated you.

Thank you, thank you, thank you to Cody Jeffrey for nominating my blog! I came across his blog a little more than a week ago and if it wasn’t for my commitments to working on my own projects, I’d be reading his posts like I’d read a thousand page novel. He’s working on a series of novels…just go and have a look!

2)  Put up the picture for the One Lovely Blog Award.

one-lovely-blog

3) Tell everyone seven things about yourself.

I’m the last child of three children. My siblings are twin sisters, older than me. Being the only male child and a single, I wished I had gotten a twin brother, or that I could get a younger brother. Was kinda lonely admittedly…but I adapted dammit!

I have awful sleeping habits. No matter how many times I try to get to sleep early, I either end up staying up late or waking up in the middle of the night and getting engaged in some activity. And then my internal clock has the audacity to want me up and about between 6 and 7 no matter what!

I consider myself an introvert, or at least leaning towards that end of the scale. I’m very quiet around people I don’t know, but once I get more comfortable with them, they may start to wonder if I have a few screws loose…in a good way. I get a lot of random, nonsensical ideas that I don’t keep to myself.

Probably an extension of my third thing-about-myself, but I’d probably gravitate towards a lifestyle where nature is my main company…with the cop out that I’d want to have technological access to the outside world.

I seem to be quite good at memorizing things. Numbers and faces especially. I used to get weird looks and remarks from my friends for rattling off numbers. They’re used to it now…in fact they seem to come to me to remind them of numbers or where they know certain persons from.

I used to be fascinated with Chemistry. Why? Explosions, bitch! Then the education system made it boring: not ONE experiment having to do with blowing up anything! Just organics and electron orbitals and…snore…

I seem to like odd numbers…

4)  And nominate seven other people and tell them in their blogs that you nominated them.

Thought provoking, beautiful artwork, intriguing stories…these are blogs you don’t wanna miss!

J. Michael Edwards at Temporalis Intersectus.

Jit Pal at The Man Who Never Existed.

Jon Negroni at Jon Negroni.

Rilzy at rilzy.

Thomas Heasman-Hunt at serial writist.

Mercilo Daviss at Stories by Mercilo Daviss.

Ray Ferrer at Ray Ferrer – Emotion on Canvas.

Billion Man Rapture: President Ramsey’s Speech After What Quickly Became Known As The ‘Billion Man Rapture’

The China Rapture Crisis: President Ramsey’s Speech Transcript

The President of the United States of America delivers a televised speech addressing the issue of the simultaneous disappearance of one billion plus humans from within China. Continue reading →

Billion Man Rapture – Chapter One Rewritten

Chapter 1

There is a sudden disturbance originating from China that has many around the world panicking. What happened? And how do the world leaders respond to the situation? Continue reading →

Facebook is the suburbs while Twitter is the city

An eloquent expression on the difference between Facebook and Twitter. Have a read!

Boulder Colorado Voter Guide - Eric Budd

Social networks enable varied forms of interaction between their users, through spectrums of openness, hierarchy, and discovery. Facebook and Twitter are the most used services to connect people socially, but bring people together in surprisingly different ways. Facebook’s strengths rely on easily connecting with established networks, showing highlights, and sharing meta-actions (like posting pictures or events). Twitter’s advantages lie in instant communication, building ad-hoc networks, and providing public and widely accessible information.

Why compare social networks to geographical networks? I’ll argue that the same openness, hierarchy, and discovery also applies to suburbs and the city, greatly affecting our modes of relationship. Suburbs span a large area, creating both silos of community and a greater privacy. Suburbs aren’t great for meeting people, but they do provide a framework for connecting disjointed entities to a center.

In comparison, cities move quickly and connect people through greater density. People gather at the local events…

View original post 1,058 more words

On ‘Billion Man Rapture’

This blog post is in relation to a novel I am working on called ‘Billion Man Rapture’. You can read the pilot chapter here.

So the inspiration for ‘Billion Man Rapture’ came while watching Skyfall. I was watching the Shanghai scenes, and due to a series of mental mixups and jailbreaks, the idea dawned on me. Remember the scene where James Bond was following the assassin? Well, somehow, I got the impression that James Bond was in the same car as the assassin in the backseat, kinda like if the assassin was his taxi driver or something. Don’t laugh! I was tired! Anyway, after I realized how absurd my notion was, especially given that James Bond – a secret agent I assure you – is always ID’d by his targets as soon as he is seen, I started to think, ‘Would China even allow foreign taxi drivers?’ So I’m also noticing how, to me, unrealistically empty Shanghai seemed to be, and that thought ran head-on into my question about China and taxi drivers. ‘Maybe they have foreign taxi drivers because Shanghai doesn’t have any Chinese…wait…what?’ An idea was born.

The idea is of great interest to me because of something that would be hard for any human in the world to ignore: China has managed to become something like an MVP of countries. It reminds me of a meme I saw floating around on the Internet, ‘In the Beginning, God made the Heaven and the Earth. The rest was Made in China.’ So I started to imagine what would happen if China suddenly became a non-factor because all its inhabitants just disappeared into thin air. I wasn’t even concerned about the perpetrators behind the phenomenon. Many books could be written solely on the premise that the world suddenly lost its second (many predict it will be the largest in a few years) economy. What the hell would happen to humanity as we know it?

As I started to think of all the possible consequences, I realized just how deep this story could be, and admittedly I wanted to take an easy way out. I was thinking, what if I posted the scenario and got the opinions of different people. But no. I say I want to be a writer and I have a premise that  has so much material I could write about. Of course it’s a work of fiction (at one point I was actually considering writing a paper on the subject…still considering it) so I don’t want it to read like a thesis. I haven’t decided yet what format I will follow for working on the idea. I’ve thought of novellas, episodic content, a big novel. I decided to write a ‘pilot’ chapter to get some feedback; I am nowhere near pleased with what I’ve posted.

Some of the questions that could be asked are:

How do humans, both individually and as a whole, deal with the disappearance of 1 billion plus people? This would be a totally illogical event to us. Do we go batshit crazy?

How do we respond to the fact that there are millions of square kilometers of land left open for exploitation?

What happens to all the weaponry that was left there unguarded, just waiting to be carted away by anybody?

Who did it? Why? Does it even make sense to fight them? Now this question I may take quite a while to answer. There are quite a few angles to the story that could be told aren’t there?

Any help that can be given to me would be much appreciated. Thanks in advance guys!