Being Ugly, Lazy and Unsociable

Hi everyone! I am just reconnecting to the web for a couple of days to let people know that I have not disappeared from the face of the Earth.

First I’d like to welcome Liz as another Friend of TC.

I’m sure you’re all wondering what I’ve been up to. I would need to write a book about it to do the story justice and perhaps one day I will. However, until then, here is a brief summary that omits much of the juicy details, but at least gives you an idea of where I am going and what I’ve been doing.

After finishing Tom Corven, and in particular throughout last year, I found the publicity drive and my natural tendency to obsessive research, led me to a period of low output (as far as my writing was concerned.) I’m not sorry about this because life has many dimensions and writing is simply one of them. However, Dreamwords was burning away inside me and I knew I had to do something drastic to feed the creative genie that got things done.

Over the last few months, I lived in Spain for a while and then returned to Croatia. I did this thinking that going to a country where I knew no one would remove any social excuse I might invent for my lack of progress. Nothing is wasted in a writer’s life and the adventure I had there is definitely one for a future book. As an example of this, I was in the mountains and was bitten in the face about 50 times by mosquitoes. I had a huge reaction and spent a couple of weeks looking like I had been in a violent fight. Since my Spanish is virtually non-existent, it was pretty tough to get by socially and for a while I felt completely isolated. (Walking along the road I would see people recoil as they saw me). This sensation is a rare insight into an area I hope most of us do not experience. It was so profound that I changed the main character in Dreamwords to take advantage of the feelings that accompanied that period. Once the swelling went down, my time in Spain was great, but it was expensive and no more productive than Croatia.

After Spain, a friend offered me his apartment in Croatia while he was in the UK for a month. I returned to Split and knew immediately it was where I should be. It was like coming home.

When I resigned my commission to write, it was with the clear intention of turning a safe life into one of risk and adventure. I expected so many problems and hoped for some success, but in reality, while it has been tough at times, I am continually surprised by the quality of life such a move has provided. It is rich and full of friends I would never have met if I’d taken the red pill.

This was once again demonstrated by the friend mentioned above (Giles) and another group I met out here (Angus and Tina, Mark and Katie) who offered me their beautiful house for a few months. Surrounded by forest, as I write this, I am looking out over the trees to the Adriatic and the Island of Hvar. Isolated in a remote part of the Island of Brac, I have found the magic formula for productivity. No TV, no web, no email, no newspapers, no neighbours, no restaurants, no bars. I have no excuses left and do not feel that I need them. Prevarication is gone and Dreamwords is sparking from my fingers and onto the keyboard in a storm of creativity. In the end, I started from page one again and now, after only two months, the novel already exceeds the length of Tom Corven. I have no doubt whatsoever that it will be complete by the end of April. From there I will spend the next couple of months making it the best I can by rewrites, reviews and edits.

The web is such a fantastic tool, but it can sap you dry if you let it. For this reason, I will continue to keep my distance until I’ve finished the first draft and have something to offer my readers for their patience. From then on I’ll parcel off a few months each year to break the back of each subsequent book and engage more fully with my friends out there for the rest of the time.

As I’ve said before, I appreciate your interest in reading this and suggest that the best way to receive updates is by signing up to the newsletter. I always welcome emails and will do my best to answer them each time I hit the web café in Split. If you don’t hear from me, please be patient, I’m probably in a dream in some remote place having the time of my life.

Everything I’ve learned in the past fifteen years of writing is going into the creation of Dreamwords. While TC was written and recorded live without editing, years of thought coupled with multiple writes and rewrites will have gone into its successor. I’m really excited by the project and have set myself the challenge of getting the novel to a mass-market – and, with that in mind, I must back off from the web again and get back to work.