So, I’m a bad person.
Well, perhaps not entirely, only mostly. It’s been a long, cold, wintry two months since my last update here on the site. There’s a lot of reasons and explanations that I could give you about that, not the least of which is that I knocked out a huge chunk of my book in the mean time, and subsequently gave myself a long, very long respite from almost anything writing related.
It’s good to take a break and get away from the material from time to time, if only to give yourself some perspective. But I think two months is more than enough time to get some distance and proper outlook on whatever it is you’re doing. People have climbed mountains in less time! But writing is not climbing mountains. It’s more like cave diving, and if you’re not careful you get lost, and run out of air, and have to come back up to breathe. And once you’ve come back up, it’s always scary going back down again.
In any case, I’ve had two months to contemplate the next phase of the book, and I’ve done a lot of research in that time. I managed to read a biography on Augustus Caesar, a chronicle on Colonel Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck, the German guerilla who gave the British so much trouble in East Africa during World War I, A Farewell to Arms (which is possibly the most gut wrenching book I’ve ever read), a history of the Russian Revolution, and another history about the tribe of Picts in Northern England during Roman times.
That’s a lot to digest! And with that research, I’ve managed to compile quite the compendious collection of notes and ideas and plots twists for the next part of the book, as well as the second novel in the trilogy. Time not wasted!
So that’s where I’m at right now. I give myself another couple of months, hopefully no more than two or three, and I’ll have the novel complete. Then it’s onto publishing, but that’s a horse of a different colour. But now I’m back on here, and the goal is to update far more frequently, get back into the swing of things, and knock this thing out of the park. The thought of a thing is often worse than the thing itself, and so it has been with this project. But no more. So once more unto the breach, dear friends, and get this damn thing done.
Pearson Sharp 