Back in the day

I think I mentioned awhile back that the first version of Nathaniel Rane appeared back at the turn of the decade. His surname was Ran back then, in reference to the Akira Kurosawa film of the same name. It means 'chaos' in Japanese. He grew an 'e' when I realised that having a verb for a name was problematic.

It was probably back in 2006/7 that I first attempted to write prose with him as a central character. Above and below are some sketches I did to help me as I had no idea how to write a book.

I abandoned the first try after only a page or two as writing seemed an impossible thing to do. The second attempt went better but again was easily abandoned. Some elements did make it into the draft that became CRY HAVOC, the first book I completed.

CRY HAVOC took two and a half years to write, ending up at 118,000 words. Of course there was probably about 100,000 words that got scraped along the way including a third of the book about an older soldier called Nial. It was an amazing experience though and I learned so much - the most important being that I can actually write a book.

SWITCH/BLADE was far easier and far better so fingers crossed all that is paying off on Book Three (whatever it is called.)

My agent is reading the first half now so very anxious to see what he thinks of it all.