A lull in the writing
It’s been a while, hasn’t it? This is partly due to the fact that I sent Tilda #4 - Tilda and the Dragons of Nargan - back to Bink after some fairly major overhauls, and I’ve been wrestling with Tilda #5 for a while.
I thought it would be easy to write the last book. I knew…well, I thought I did…what was going to happen in it. I knew where I wanted Tilda to end up in the series finale.
But…
There’s a heck of a lot of stuff to tie together. All the strands from previous books need to be honoured and referenced in certain places. The end has to be satisfactory for the reader who has followed Tilda throughout all of her adventures. And the problem was, the more I thought about how I could achieve this (remember, I usually have an idea of where I’m starting from and where I’m going to finish in a novel, but the getting there is often rather hazy til I have it all figured out) the more ideas I came up with. The more ideas I came up with, the more convoluted the storyline got. And the more convoluted it got, the less the various bits seemed to hang together in a credible, logical (but still with a few surprises) order.
Add to this ‘life’, especially as the UK has pretty much no covid restrictions now and my life is apparently ‘back to normal’ with everything that entails, and I just didn’t seem to have the time to write. Maybe I was even sabotaging myself, because subconsciously I didn’t want Tilda’s story to end? I mean, once Tilda #5 is written, what do I do then…? She’s been a part of my life for so long, especially when you consider all her earlier incarnations as Rurik and the Rings of Issraya! I’m sure other ideas will come to me, but I’m not allowing myself to think too much about them because Tilda needs my attention.
I talked through some of my plotting difficulties with Claudia at Bink, and although she has made some very useful suggestions, the very act of thinking through the difficulties helped to clarify my thinking. I now feel much happier with the way forward.
It’s never easy to begin, but I did, and as of today I’ve got a few pages describing some very scribbly scenes in my Tilda #5 notebook, which actually sound like they could be the beginning and part of a story, rather than a set of disconnected notes and ideas. So it’s onwards and upwards, hopefully over the lull and feeling a bit more inspired to write.
In other news…
I will be at the Stafford Litfest, taking place in Stafford at the University of Wolverhampton (of which I am an alumni!) between the 20th-23rd May, selling books and possibly reading at one of the children’s events on the Saturday.
I’m also taking part in the Newark Book Festival again! It’s running from the 7th-10th July, and I’ll definitely be in the market place on the 9th and 10th, plus this year I’m involved in the schools programme part of the festival and will be visiting Halam Primary School on the 14th July. (I’m also hoping that on at least one of the market days, my author friend Mark R Brandon and his fabulous steampunk stories will be with me)
Tilda and the Dragons of Nargan will be published later this year! Not sure exactly when yet - depends very much on Bink’s editing roster - but I’ve seen the cover and it’s lush! I’ll keep you posted on progress there. Who knows, we might even manage an in-person launch this time?
And on the home front? We have blue tits nesting in the box again; the badger has done a good job of digging in my veg beds, so I’m not sure which veg is growing where at the moment; I took part in The Great Fashion Fast in March and am working really hard to buy mainly pre-loved clothing and visibly repair old items from here on in; I’ve used up lots of sock wool in a blanket, and am stitching a design on an ordination stole for a friend.
Going to leave you with a sneaky teaser of Tilda and the Dragons’ cover…
