November Novel Essential Information

Novel Title: Ramifications

Time Setting: 2017

Genre: Thriller

Minimum Word Goal: 120,000

Timespan: July–September

Location: Brisbane, Queensland

Main Characters: Lachlan Blackwood, Dominik O'Shea

Background Information:

Lachlan has lived nothing short of a troubled existence. His mother had been conceived at the age of seventeen and raised by her mother off the income of waiting tables. He was conceived, in turn, when his mother was sixteen, prompting her to drop out of school.

His mother had gone to Schoolie's Week in Brisbane and met a handsome surfer — which is all he knows about his father — and the following year after he was born she went back again, found the same surfer, and conceived his sister.

The year after that, she returned to Brisbane and never returned. Still police have yet to figure out what happened, and they don't even have any remains to go off of, leaving Lachlan and his sister to be raised by his grandmother, who sought to find her daughter until she found out that it was likely her daughter would be dead.

His grandmother then met a handsome, single shipping company owner, whom she moved in with, giving her grandchildren a chance at an opulent life in Sydney.

Lachlan, however, disliked his grandmother's boyfriend from the start, and quickly became a delinquent, even doing a stint in juvenile prison before he was fifteen.

In prison he met a young gangster whom he became friends with before joining in the gang with and bringing his sister — his most beloved companion — with him.

Their disappearance drove his grandmother to suicide, which depressed his sister, who ended up dying of a drug overdose within a year of their grandmother's suicide despite Lachlan's efforts to prevent as much.

Being as the gang boss' son had caused his sister's death, Lachlan tried to kill him, only to have the whole gang turn against him. None of the other gangs in the area were interested in taking him on either, as they believed it was a trap.

Recently, however, Lachlan encountered members of a Brisbane-based gang that is one of the biggest and most troublesome in all Australia; he impressed that gang's boss to the point of being accepted as a member and, for his own safety, moved to Brisbane.

Dom's life started out rather privileged. His father was a prestigious Australian prosecution lawyer whose family had come from Ireland, and his mother was a Serbian-born fashion model.

Born thirteen years after his brother — who is the younger of his two older siblings — Dom was considered an accident by his parents, and also somewhat of an annoyance to his siblings, which led him to act out from an early age.

His actions included breaking dishes and windows in fits, breaking out of his bedroom to intrude on whatever his parents happened to be doing at the time, and even sneaking into his mother's suitcase when she was preparing to go on a tour to the US on the same day he was supposed to be returning to boarding school.

Being found out at the Melbourne Airport, however, he was shipped off to boarding school anyways, where he continued to act out by disrupting class, bullying fellow students, vandalising cars, picking fights, and starting the biggest food fight in the school's history.

His parents' efforts at discipline, such as shutting him up in his room for long periods and leaving him at home while they went on exotic vacations, only made things worse, as he would take out his rage on the opulent mansion and its contents.

He even got arrested for driving his father's Ferrari without a license, and brought his parents and siblings home from a trip early by setting the house alight and destroying a good portion of it.

Finally, when he was sixteen, he ran away from his boarding school and got a ride with a somewhat bohemian group that headed to Gold Coast in Queensland to live out of their van and surf.

This introduced him to drugs and liquor, which he made use of to take the edge of the painful loneliness and neglect he felt.

Within a year of arriving at Gold Coast some of the group leaders were arrested for having stolen the van, leaving him and several others whom they'd picked up along the way to live on the streets.

It wasn't long, though, before he ended up at an old church that was used as the base for a homeless shelter. The people there were loving and kind unlike any other people Dom had met, and because of that — and the fact that the most beautiful girl he'd ever seen in his life volunteered there — Dom soon was spending a lot more time there.

With the help of his friends at the Shelter he quit the drugs and the drinking and soon became a volunteer at the Shelter himself, as well as becoming a Christian and having the privilege of marrying the young woman he'd fallen in love with.

Just two years ago Mags, the Founder and Director of the Shelter disappeared, leaving leadership of the Shelter to fall to him as the only other full-time volunteer. Her remains were found washed up on the shore of the Brisbane River within a year and after three days of prayer and fasting by the Executive Board of the Shelter, it was determined that Dom would be her replacement.

Dom and his wife have since run the Shelter as full-time volunteers, living in a donated house off of a donated income, and his wife has been subtly encouraging him to reconcile with his parents so that they can know that he's still alive.

The novel begins on November 1.