The Way Ahead

Those of you who followed my weekly blog posts will know that I stopped once my lovely wife had passed away. I had already given up writing and declared that I wouldn’t write anymore because I could no longer see the point. For me, life had more or less come to an end. A year has passed now, and on August 18th, the anniversary of Pat’s death, I watched her funeral (plenty of tears). That evening I went out to a fancy restaurant with Pat’s brother and his wife. It was my sister-in-law’s suggestion; one that I am glad I finally overcame my reluctance and agreed to join them.

Two days later I began what I would probably call my ‘Odyssey’. I travelled up to Norfolk to spend a weekend with my eldest son. Then I drove round to Lincolnshire, stopping off at my elder brother’s place for a couple of hours, to pick up Pauline, a long-standing friend of mine and Pat’s. Pauline lost her husband ten months ago. We came home and spent the next few days visiting my family in West Sussex, Hampshire and Dorset. Ten days after setting out, and covering 1000 miles, I was back home reflecting on the way forward, and acknowledging it had been a kind of catharsis; a move ahead in the healing process.

Although I had decided to no longer write, the book world never really left me; it is too ingrained in my psyche. I submitted a couple of my books to online publishers, never really expecting anything to happen, when the Wild Rose Press in America agreed to publish my romantic family saga, Past Imperfect. The book was released under their name on September 1st. I have no control over the book, having signed a five year deal. No money changed hands; they dealt with the formatting, jacket design and metadata.

Shortly after WRP accepted my book, I began having thoughts about writing again. I had an email from Kobo about ‘Na-no-wromo’ (?), a yearly challenge for authors to write a 50,000 word novel in the month of November. I didn’t give that too much thought until I remembered I had already started a sequel to my pulp fiction thriller, Hunted. I had a look and found I had written 17000 words before I stopped writing.

So now I’m wondering if I really want to get back in the game. I think the answer is probably a yes but needs a little more thought. I bought myself a Yamaha Clavinova earlier this year (a digital piano) because I wanted to learn to play piano. I played keyboard for years, but playing the piano is something entirely different. I thought that would fill the empty space left by the absence of spending time on another kind of keyboard knocking out thrillers, but I think I could cope with both.

This blog post will be my first attempt at getting back to my book world, but instead of posting weekly, I will keep it to a monthly blog (unless something unusual happens). We’ll see.

Wish me luck!