This is a big month for me. Five years after starting my official writing journey in 2019 I’ve got a website! Amazing. Thank you to Paul at Pixelism for setting up something that is crisp, clean and easy to navigate.
Time After Time Update.
30% written and I hope it’ll be as fun and enjoyable for you to read, as it is for me to write. The main characters are: Elizabeth Cavendish, an archaeologist specialising in ancient languages; Icelander Luc Peltonen, ex special forces combat diver, marine archaeology dive safety instructor and team leader; Talia Noss, a Jewish/Egyptian Scribe and Knowledge Guardian at the Royal Library and Museion in Alexandria and Linus Vibia, Roman Tribune and accomplished spy employed by Caesar.
Although I keep meaning to get to work on Time After Time, it’s been a slow start. I have five years worth of research and material to sort through. It’s taken a few weeks, on and off and then I spent a lot of time agonising over structure. That’s a really important element and not as simple as beginning, middle, end. Although a three act structure worked well with the Summer Queen, it’s not suitable for Time after Time, particularly as it jumps around through the millennia. There is also a rather whimsical, incidental character that I’ve fallen in love with and want to show more of, so I’ve needed to re-map the storyline to give him more coverage. I’ll introduce him here: Commander Harold Stephen Murchison, ex Royal Navy Special Boat Service (UK Special Forces), possibly retired and Luc Peltonen’s best friend.
I came to like Harry as I mapped out his life story up to the point we meet him. I do that for every single character, no matter how minor. It is time consuming but if you really want them to be believable people that can be related to, particularly their issues and traumas etc., it’s not a step worth skipping. That being said, Harry is quite a cliche and unrealistic character but he’s just so charming and likeable. And it’s fiction and I self-publish, so hey, Harry’s in and I hope you’ll enjoy him for what he is – a bit of ridiculous light relief.
I’ve still an enormous amount of research to accomplish around cold water diving, marine archaeology which is very specialist, underwater ROV equipment and so forth. Some of this involves hours of internet and academic/scientific paper reading and some of it involves watching documentaries, which I have to say, is often more valuable. I’m one of those people who learn by watching or doing, so an hour long programme on marine archaeology in the Black Sea gives me huge amounts of real world application and information.
That’s it for now, more updates in May and I may even have a picture or two of home grown vegetables to bore you with!