This is about my novel of the same name, in case anyone is confused. (Yes, I am a “writer”.)
In my collection of notes that I jot down – ideas and such – I thought up the title several years ago. After a friend shared his latest excursus about the Mayan Calendar (12•20•2012; Our Last Golden Sunset? by R. S. Marshal) I had an idea about what the world might be like in the future. That is, if some of the cataclysmic stuff he mentioned actually came to pass.
When I came up with that idea, the title “July 57th” came to mind and the story was born. In the story, the normal Earth calendar had to be expanded for reasons that are detailed in the tale, into a construct almost twice as long. Hence the longer months. And some ancient calendar is predicting the world is going to end on that particular date during the course of the tale.
When I was first talking about the novel to friends, they were confused. Why not just call it “the twelfth of never” or something? But the date is not used as a metaphor. It is an actual calendar date in the story, hence the need to re-structure the solar system a bit to have the intelligence agent from Mars travel away from the Sun to get to Earth.
And it took quite a bit of research and calculations to “create” the worlds of the future. Even though it is a novel of science-“fantasy”, it still has scientific elements that have to make sense.
But, then… several readers complained about the ending. One even went so far as to say the story had been contrived to result in that ending and challenged me to re-write it as straight science fiction.
So, challenge accepted, I am re-writing it to be a true science-fiction rather than a fantasy but it can no longer be called “July 57th” as that has no meaning in the re-written tale. Actually, I still don’t have a title for it but it no longer has any fantastic elements in it. Which should please the “purists” out there.
Meanwhile, several people have asked if I am planning a sequel to July 57th. Nothing has presented itself to me yet nor has it garnered enough interest to be continued.
So, I’ll be moving on to other projects.
Science Fantasies 