During my first year at university I only had limited access to a television, and most of my friends were still down in the southern reaches of England. Consequently I often found myself at a loose end of an evening, so decided to embark on a project which quickly spiralled out of all proportion.

This project - in case you hadn't guessed - was to write a novel. It was something I'd often thought about doing, but in the past I've not exactly been renowned for seeing such things to completion. This, I decided, would be different. This would be something to work at until it was finished. This was something that I had to do, just to prove that I could.

Besides, as I commented at the time, it was only going to be a short novel, probably not even reaching 60,000 words.

Almost three years, and 200,000 words later, I finally finished it.

The story itself is nominally a fantasy tale, and has been likened to the works of CS Lewis, Umberto Eco and JRR Tolkein. My own view of it is that it lies somewhere between Terry Pratchett and Tolkein - definitely more of a serious storyline than the former, but with far more humour than the latter.

It's also quite an epic tale, covering everything from the creation of the earth to the very nature of the gods themselves. And there's quite a bit about chickens too.

Basically the plot revolves primarily around four disparate characters, and their attempt to travel to heaven and back, in order to fulfil a prophecy (although they all have their own reasons for the trip). Because of this, it may possibly offend anyone who holds particularly strong religious views, although at least one devout Christian has read it without any complaints. Nevertheless, you have been warned.

So is it actually any good? Naturally I'm bound to say it is, but the reactions of the handful of other people who have read it have been very good indeed - i.e. very enthusiastic, rather than just diplomatically favourable. If you want to see any real, genuine quotes from these strange folk, just look at the bottom of the index page for this section. Having said that, it has so far been rejected by four publishers, so it's up to you whose opinion you most trust.

So, at last, down to the nitty gritty of obtaining this literary tome. I wrote it as plain ASCII text, which should be readable by just about every word processor in the known history of the universe, saving each chapter in a separate file. These files have all been collected together into a single ZIP file of some 480k, which you can download by clicking on the link below. Naturally you'll need a program to extract ZIP files, and a text editor or word processor. Please note that some of the chapters are quite long, and won't load into some of the more limited text editors, such as the Notepad utility provided with earlier versions of Windows.

Also, as the chapters are stored as plain ASCII text, it was not practical to include accented characters, so you'll have to do your best to read around them. Don't worry, there aren't too many.

Because of its size, I don't recommend printing it out unless you have lots of spare paper and ink, or access to printing free of charge (not that I'd condone using any resources from your place of work for such a purpose). My own print-out occupies a depth of about 40mm of A4 paper, printed on one side in a standard Courier font. This represents just over a ream in real money.

Finally, the name of the book. Throughout its gestation, it was known only as "Xav's Book" although I did have one title that I favoured. Once the book was almost completed, I asked some of the people who had been reading it for other suggestions. Ultimately, however, I went with my original title: Not Dead Yet. For any trivia buffs, this phrase was taken from one of these web pages, as it seemed to fit the storyline appropriately.

Click this link to download Xav's novel (480k)

Not Dead Yet
©1997, Xav