Publications
Divergences
Monique M. Toth
Coming from one novel this set of six three book series looks at how changes and twists and turns changes the course of a persons life. It follows the main character, Hesther Dai Johns, and how her life changes and turns along it's course. Set in a slightly parallel world to our own, familiar but not the same, this is an exploration of life and what can happen. Coming from the idea of having a character with a particular set of skills this turned into an exercise in exploring how a persons life changes with life choices and changing twists and turns of fate around them.
- Divergence One – Hesther goes to jail for protecting her sister at seventeen and this means that instead of going into mainstream life ends up a made woman in the inner city seven, a discrete but well known group of drug dealers in a slightly alternate version of Sydney. Taking over the Afghan Connection as the business manager, she becomes a major figure in the underworld before her final execution by rivals in her fifties.
- Divergence Two – In this divergence, Hesther avoids jail because the events that created her imprisonment as she did not have to go as far in protecting her sister. In this one too, which is different from all the others, her first husband John Gary-Johns lives, which creates a different life course. In this one, finding a partly legitimate niche in Mental Health and Long Term Prisoner advocacy, she finds her way into academics and eventually politics as a Labour Senator at a time of strife, suffering the direct effects of climate change and structural society problems reaching a crisis point.
- Divergence Three – In this one, following the fact that Hesther avoided jail, but her first husband, John Gary-Johns dies, this changes her life again. This creates a it me and space where, diverted from mainstream mental health work, through a partner who is a fashion model, Mark Kindlay becomes a venture capital businesswoman, fashion industry minder/Mental health worker and partly shady figure, using her connections to the inner city seven to help her do her job and protect the models in the agency she works for, whites. This follows her life with this turn of fate.
- Divergence Four – This divergence follows both the ideas of what happens when we make snap decisions we later regret as well as speculative science fiction. It follows where after ten years of work in Antiterrorism and counter insurgency academics for the DIA, Hesther ends up among the founding members of a combination military/scientific speculative colony on Mars as security chief. This follows the colony from inception, to first conflict to independence of Mars.
- Divergence Five – This divergence follows off the decision to go to America and take up Counter terrorism and anti insurgency work. But instead of the Mars colony, a program which in this divergence fails, Hesther is recruited into the Greek Alphabet protocol. A pentagon black covert operations program that spans the Middle East and South East Asia, this is highly successful, but puts a strain on Hesther and her family life as well. Exploring geopolitical issues, the ethics of freedom of information, war overt and covert, mental health and how family works, this is a divergence about the effects of war personally, politically and globally.
- Divergence Six – This divergence, the final one and the one the original novel came from, is about the fall of society and it's consequences. Set in a world where a computer virus wiped out the governments and the Trans National Corporations took over, this explores what happens after to the ordinary people through the eyes of those who saw it coming from battle experience and fight back. In a way the ultimate disaster speculation, this is one I as the author truly hope that we never get. Look at this one as a true precautionary tale on what this world could end up being, but we should not become, but is a possibility, even if remote.