SoS 17/4/21
It’s been an age since I contributed to SoS, despite that I’ve always visited all the other gardens across the globe. Life’s been a bit busy and to be honest, it’s that time of year where nothing much is going on in our gardens.
It’s been an age since I contributed to SoS, despite that I’ve always visited all the other gardens across the globe. Life’s been a bit busy and to be honest, it’s that time of year where nothing much is going on in our gardens.
At the end of every season and with the beginning of a new one, I write a blogpost that’s a bit like a newsletter, of where things are up to for this #writer.
What does one do while one is waiting for the editor to do his thing on one’s latest book?
Well I can’t in all honesty begin a new book, because I might get crossed-wires and confuse character arcs. But I have done a little reading, future proofing, if you like – about the great heresies of the twelfth centuries which is background for the next book.
Once, some time ago, 22nd December 2018 to be exact, I had a dream about a young illuminator monk.
And so, after a mammoth amount of time, I’ve finally finished writing my fourteenth book – Reliquary.
Seven of the those are historical fictions, a genre which is my first love.
A writer can’t spend all day in purdah. Although given 2020-21, Lockdown does resemble a kind of solitary confinement. But even in Lockdown, we have all been entitled to our ‘outside time’.
And so it is for me.
Our big garden is tired and begging for autumn to arrive. We’re in the tail end of meshed weather systems today and the humidity is tropical. Rain is falling and the waves are crashing on the beach. The garden needs a good fertilise and for the windiest summer for ages to cease. Hopefully next week I can post on how it looks but in the meantime – on Thursday I was in the city and took some pics of our little Matchbox garden…
Yesterday, I looked at the word count of Reliquary, my current manuscript, and realised I had passed the 100,000 mark. I was surprised. It seemed only a short time ago that I watched 50,000 tick over and then time just slowed and it seemed no matter how often I wrote, the numbers barely changed. Some days, I would delete a page or a paragraph. And at one point, I accidentally opened the file at the very beginning and decided I wanted to hit the readers pretty hard from the get-go and so added a kind of prologue to set the scene.
I have still to get the editor’s approval on that one but it works for me…