A return

Well this blog has been silent for 2 months.  I was away for a reasonable chunk of it and ill for another part but mostly I had run out of things to say.  My writing was not going well (not going at all most days) and I was getting more than a little bent out of shape about it.

Writing a second book is tougher than I thought.  In some ways you are afforded a few liberties as you are freed from the confines of defining your characters but other things have had me tied up in knots.  The Keepers of the Key was heavy in both story and characters, with Jonathan and Dowd scrabbling their way through increasing weird and wonderful scenarios.  With The Keepers of the Fire I have even more characters but a plot that is far more emotional and personal (to the characters, not me) while still retaining the scale of the first book but it far less a journey of discovery and takes place in an even tighter time-frame.  Weaving the individual stories together and changing styles between fantasy (ok – not really, but this is the closest description I can think of for one of the threads), crime-thriller and the style of the first book (whatever that was – I am still unclear) is turning out to be quite a challenge.

For the longest time I was stumped, convinced I didn’t have enough actual plot, convinced that more needed to happen within each of the narrative threads.  The realisation that simply returning a reader to familiar characters can be an entertaining thing in and of itself helped and I have begun to write more freely, letting myself be immersed in the characters and just enjoying their interaction.

I just hope now that I can maintain the momentum I have found as I push forward into the real meat of the plot.