The Custodian Libertion presents The Natural Lottery

Every night at exactly seven o'clock local time, the Natural Lottery Show will hack into the GES or Global Evertainment System to deliver the intended message of a Free Planet for all.

"We are gathered here, today, in a secret location known only as Bullingdon Woods to the select members of our new Diversity,” Asalah begins her introduction, “It's nice to see so many who've already adopted the Custodian way, and so many who've shown commitment to such in a future iteration, are all present at this inauguration of the official Campaign for a Free Planet. I'd like you to raise your glasses, beaks, muzzles, funny-shaped back things, your too many arms, your communal living spaces to the cause we've committed our physical and intellectual lives to.”

"You know this is really gonna hurt, don't ya?” one dissenting voice from the back mutters. 

"We are … yes, we will have to make the ultimate sacrifice for our fellow man. But this is something we are all aware of. No negative voices are to be allowed to 'sway our resolve'. We aim that every living person on Planet Earth will hear our message. Like a new record no one likes on first hearing, we will repeat and replay our message of a Free Planet for all the world to hear, until people finally get it. Until the world starts to wake up from its ridiculous monetary nightmare. Until people under.stand.”

"What if it doesn't work?” the voice again, from the quivering underbrush, the one dissenting voice of reason.

And you know what, the more Asalah Al-Faghori thinks about it, the more she becomes concerned that the whole Custodian Liberation is a complete red herring doomed to ultimate and embarrassing failure...

"CUSTODIAN" the first novel of the free planet series is due in ebook, kindle and paperback REAL SOON.

Kevlar Kubitz - gets you from A to B in perfect harmony

One of my favourite features of the Custodian novel are the Kevlar Kubitz that transport corporate drones i.e. You The People, from your CDZ or Corporate Dorm Zone to your offices of The Industry like mosquitos trapped in amber. They have this 'genetic muzak' that plays in your back brain that you can only 'hear later' while you're digesting the odorous tasks of the working day. And they don't always tell the truth. Though it's not like you'll have any discernment anyway, so any old crap story works. THe more lurid and insane the better.

But there are 'scintillas of truth' therein. If you know what you're being told. This particular bit is pulled straight out of the early part of the novel when you're not quite sure what your heroic role is.

P.V.s or Psyche-Vertisements, another ESI ready-to-wear, will push any old marketing to the core of your brain during your daily commute: here's a classic. 

January, 1932. Dusseldorf, Germany. Everyone knows the story about Lord Adolfus Hitler, 'cos you can't unknow a psyche-vertisement until its contractual erosion time has expired'. Heil Hitler, so the story goes, had just given a rousing speech before the Industrial Club in Elberfelder Strasse, just round the corner from where you recently worked in Wupper Strasse in what's still known as Dusseldorf in what once was called Germany. Heil Hitler was leaving the meeting, his protective entourage surrounding him, and he just slipped on something in Elberfelder Strasse, right outside the steps of the Industrial Club.

Died on the spot.
Everybody knows this … it's part of your Industry Education.

When a Kevlar Kubitz arrives in your Corporate Dorm Zone it'll sniff you out, home in on you, chemically. It'll ferret you out of your stinking pit of Evertainment slumber where you're allowed to be who you really wanna be. This is the perfect tactic for a ruthless organism like The Industry who may need to apply Leverage™ later on in your career cycle. You know, when your role as an asset for the Corporation, your paid-for loyalty, is put under 'ethical pressure'.

Angie's Diary reviews Custodian and it's not even out yet.

art, literature and lifestyle website Angie's Diary have a review of Free Planet¹ CUSTODIAN on their site, and the book isn't even out yet.

"Custodian" is the tale of one group of Oxford University's finest minds, the eponymous Custodians, who offer mankind a technological 'get out of jail free card' enabling them to slip from under the yoke of Corporate Slavery to THE INDUSTRY. [source ANGIE'S DIARY CUSTODIAN REVIEW]

"Custodian" (the first Free Planet novel from Mike Philbin) is due out real soon in ebook, kindle and paperback edition.


TEN DAYS LATER UPDATE: Angie's Diary have also run with that Kevlar Kubitz feature (in the post above) with slightly different data than the post content.

Free Planet¹ CUSTODIAN

custodian final cover

free planet¹ CUSTODIAN third draft complete:- 

novel available soon in Kindle and Paperback format.

as this first Free Planet novel was about three years in the research and a couple years in the writing/rewriting, the start of the book and the end of the book needed 'stylistically welding'.

I've edited, reworked and tightened up the opening chapters and gone through the rest of the opening part of the book so that it ties together better with the attitude, speed and style of the latter part of the book. I got rid of the introduction which, while being a nice rant about the education system that I'd rewritten kinda like about eight times, just got in the way of the real narrative.

Also, a very good friend of mine (editor and writer) will be going over it with a fine-tooth comb for one final line-edit. And there's a new cover design incorporating the power numbers into the free planet subtitle. After much internal debate, I left this message on the dedication page...

dedicated to all our children's children

...as (should such a thing as a Free Planet ever come about) that generation of people i.e. the children of today's children, will probably be the first to understand 'then' what we did or are trying to do for them 'now' and be able to deal with the crucial and life-enhancing chaaanges that they'll need to incorporate into their lives.

Free Planet² LIBERATOR

liberator final cover

free planet² LIBERATOR will be a proper horroshow, self-sufficiency, creativity, passion and kinship self-destruct rollercoaster nightmare brainf*ck survivor vs conspiracy slaughterfest.

All driven by a PARALLEL PROJECT involving the MI(C)C or Military Industrial (Congressional) Complex  that was 'beaten to the finish line' by events in book one, Custodian. We see how the events at the back end of Custodian dove-tail with the events in Liberator.

It's really nowhere near where you thought this series might have gone. Think dark global covert underbelly. Though the news that Roland Emmerich is working on a sequel to Independence Day that involves parallel history and back-engineering of alien tech threatens to scupper my so-called originality if I don't get this book out rapido!

The really annoying thing about book two's Custodian-paralleling narrative is I'm getting more and more 'messages from the ether' about the content of book 3: REAPER which is potentially gonna blow the whole Free Planet message out of the ether into another dimension entirely. The idea for this series being that, at some point in the future, all three books will be reunited in a nice fat single volume of the full Free Planet story.

LIBERATOR due in 2014.

Free Planet³ REAPER

reaper final cover

Since 2005 or so, I've been busying myself with the Free Planet issues associated with 'freeing mankind from the corporate yoke of financial slavery' and there's been a spin-off, the Free Planet novel.

It was supposed to be a one-shot event, a single expurgation of fears, despair and panic about where our race might go in the pursuit of Free Planet ideals, legacies. It came to 80,000 words at the crucial second draft, and then something magical happened. The novel ended, after a series of cuts and rewrites to the finale, in May of 2012 and I've suddenly realised I couldn't leave it there. Now is the time to announce that this novel is actually the 'first of a series' of Free Planet novels.

As you'll see from the reworked cover for this first novel in the Free Planet series, it has become free planet 1: CUSTODIAN.

It's still the same book shared consecutively by The Custodians and You The People but there'll be more importance placed upon your eponymous 'custodian' role in book one. Therefore, it suits the series better if I sacrifice the original one-shot 'free planet' title to that of 'free planet #' and bring the 'custodian' aspect of this first book more into the foreground. I mean, it's there anyway, via the Custodian Liberation but this way we get to see how 'real heroes are made' from the most unlikely of raw material.

I have a detailed notion of where such a series would go, starting with free planet 1: CUSTODIAN the free planet 2: LIBERATOR and free planet 3: REAPER (image above) -- it's going to be such a beautiful and brutal storyline. The eyes are the window to the 'black' hole. Trust me, I'm an (evil) author.

REAPER due in 2015.

Free Planet novel - CUSTODIAN - Goodreads hosting Exclusive First Chapter

just as it says on the tin, Goodreads is hosting the Exclusive First Chapter of my new novel Free Planet novel CUSTODIAN on their site.

Here's a teaser moment...

Promptly, she begins her prepared monologue, “I had a dream last night. It was a dream about our little house in the countryside. A cottage with a thatched roof and heavy oak doors. Beams in the lounge, the kitchen and the bedrooms. It was snowing outside. All the foxes and deer brought their families to our house to avoid THE CULL. You could hear the hunt dogs barking in the distance. Getting nearer. On the TV was the story about the foxes and deer arriving because we'd saved one or two of them every year.

“I don't have such a 'little house in the countryside'. I don't have a TV. And these contradictions have helped me … understand … what the events of the next few minutes are going to cause. I realised this dream is about us. Our little Group, The Custodians. You have no idea who we are. Neither so the inveterate profit-mongers we call our superiors, our sponsors. But tonight the Custodians are going to cut the heads of industry free from their enslavement to the dollar, the yuan, the t-bill. We're no longer going to allow the yoke of corporate slavery to polish the necks of mankind. It's going to be a routing of Historical Proportions. Real Freedom for all is going to Sprout. And Flourish.”

She pauses there, and places the transparent hundreds-and-thousands-filled capsule onto her tongue in a proscriptive fashion. She takes the glass of distilled water and sips from it. Swallows, with obvious effort. Looks about nostalgically and makes a frown. Then a smile appears on one side of her mouth. She drains the glass in big loud gulps. Wipes her glistening mouth with the back of her wrist. Takes a deep breath. Sets the glass down out of harm's reach. Waits...