Happiness is finishing the first draft of your book

It’s quite simple really. A number of the stories in my forthcoming book were written four or even five years ago as I trudged to, and back from, work. they were experiments to see how quickly I could write a story that could engage the reader, let them see a different world, and leave them wanting more.

However, I wanted more. I wanted Detective Inspector Blaise Maximillian to be more than a few flash-fictions. I wanted other people to truly get to know him and his sidekick, Bill Thatcher, and to learn more about the Great War of 1914-1922 and the Bitter Defeat that followed it.

And now, they will be able to. I’ve taken that ever-so-important step of completing the first draft of the book. It stands at around 51,000 words in length, nearly 300,000 characters, and 138 paperback pages. Hopefully I’ll be adding more words as I edit, expanding on ideas that at the time were clear to me, but which I now realise need a tweak so that the reader truly understands.

So it begins. I’m certain that fairly soon I’ll be happy enough to send it off to someone else for a good edit. Then I just have to get it up onto Amazon pre-0rder.