Marc Nobbs: Blog

It’s been eight years since I published the second book in the Paul Robertson Saga, “A Tortured Soul.” Eight very long years that has seen a lot of changes in my life, in me personally, and in the world at large.

I began writing the third, and what I had hoped would be the final book, immediately after finishing ATS. And I’ve been working on it ever since. I’ve been distracted by other projects. I’ve hit roadblocks in the story. I’ve found time to write to be difficult to come by.

GTA online and Red Dead Redemption II didn’t exactly help.

The first draft of the “A Wounded Heart” manuscript is currently about 80,000 words long—about 10,000 words for every year I’ve been working on it. I had originally anticipated the full text would be in the order of 150,000 words long, but if I’m honest with myself, in the 80,000 words I’ve written, I’ve told about a third of the story I want to tell.

But…

I am almost at what would seem like a natural “break” point in the overall story. I have therefore decided that when I get to that break point, I will consider “A Wounded Heart” completed, and set about editing the first draft into a state that can be released.

I’m aiming to do that by the end of this year—although, as always, this self-imposed deadline is less of a deadline and more of an ambition.

I will then extend the series to a fourth and maybe even fifth book. I had always wanted this to be a trilogy. I like trilogies. They are neat. But if Star Wars can be stretched to nine films and Toy Story to four, I no longer see the point of trying to shoehorn Paul’s story into three books. And once the mental hurdle of it no longer being a trilogy is overcome, then really it’s just a case of taking as many books as is needed to tell the story properly.

This does mean I will need to come up with more titles though—God help me.

Chloë Goodman is a significant character in the Westmouthshire Universe. She is the female lead in Kissed by a Rose, she is mentioned a few times in Eternally & Evermore, makes a fleeting cameo appearance in A Good Man when Paul & Clarissa visit the university campus and a longer, more significant appearance in A Tortured Soul—a pivotal appearance, actually.

She is mentioned in both The Lies We Lead and The Truths We Live for reasons that should be obvious if you’ve read both of those books and Kissed by a Rose.

And she features heavily in the forthcoming A Wounded Heart. (More on AWH later in the week).

But… Did you trust her when you first met her in Kissed by a Rose?

I make no secret of the fact that my intention when I wrote Kissed was for the reader to not be completely sure if they could trust Chloë or not. So, if you don’t trust her, then that’s “Job Done”, wouldn’t you say? And even her appearance in ATS leaves you not completely trusting her—at least, that was the intention.

But as I near the end of the first draft of A Wounded Heart, Chloë is very clearly a young woman who is comfortable and at ease with her position in life and the world. Finally, I can say that by now, the reader should trust that Chloë’s intentions come from the heart and that her heart really is in the right place.

"Kissed by a Rose" was the novel that created my Westmouthshire Universe - by which I mean it was the first novel written to be set there. I suppose, technically, "Eternally & Evermore", the second novel to be set there, turned it into a "Universe". But I digress.

"Kissed" was originally published by Phaze Books, an imprint of Mundania, and its publishing rights reverted to me a couple of years ago when Mundania folded. I republished it through KDP last year, and now it's available on Bookapy too.

As with the last few novels I've bought over to SOL, I have some HTML work to do on the files extracted from the ePub, but once I've done that I can start to submit it here. We're probably looking at this weekend before it starts to post.

As with "Eternally & Evermore", there are a lot of chapters, 52 including a prologue & epilogue, but they are quite short, most of them less than 2000 words. The novel is about 91,500 words in total. So I'll probably post 2 - 3 chapters a day over the next couple of weeks.

I've mentioned it before, but "Kissed" was inspired by Don Lockwood's story, "Transcending the Role", although, the word count is almost 3 times that of Don's story so there should still be some surprises in there for those of you that have read "TtR". And if you haven't read "TtR", then give it a go. It's a really good story in Don's distinctive Romantic style.

You can already buy "Kissed by a Rose" from Bookapy here

I like the idea of comments from readers at the end of a story. It gives me an insight into what they may be thinking - particularly if those comments come as the story is being posted.

But not all comments are going to be positive. I accept that. Think everyone does. But if the replies to a comment by "christianjordan" on Eternally & Evermore are anything to go by, it seems that some people make a habit of posting negative comments on a story. This is always going to happen on open forums. You see it all the time on Twitter & Facebook etc.

But I thought I'd take Mr Jordan's comments in good faith and respond to them as such anyway. Below is his comment and my reply. i feel I can post it here because both the comment and my reply are already public.

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@christianjordan: So why do I give a shit about any of these characters? A run of the mill lawyer and essentially a gold digger? This entire novel seems like a exposition on the lives of very ordinary people with few if any redeeming qualities and for no apparent reason we're supposed to care about?

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Christian, thank you for your comment, which appears to have come after Chapter 20, which represents the end of "Part II" of the story.
Let me address each point you make.

"So why do I give a shit about any of these characters?"
That was kind of the whole point of "Part I". Giving you their history together as youths who seemed destined to be together, was meant to make you care about why they didn't end up together. If it didn't, then I have failed you.

"A run of the mill lawyer and essentially a gold digger?"
Run of the Mill is harsh. The early chapters of "Part II" establish Will as one of the most respected Lawyers for the Elderly in hie region - that's hardly run of the mill
As for Amy being a Gold Digger, I'd genuinely like to know what gives you that impression of her. Genuinely Interested. At this point of the story, I don't think we've seen enough of Amy as an adult to for that opinion - or indeed, form any opinion of her.

"This entire novel seems like a exposition on the lives of very ordinary people with few if any redeeming qualities and for no apparent reason we're supposed to care about?"
Aren't all novels essentially just a slice of people's lives? And, in all honesty, I think the best ones are about "ordinary" people, because these are the ones most people are able to relate to, because most people are "ordinary". As for not caring about them, well, that was what "Part 1" was supposed to do. If it didn't, then I suspect that say more about you than the book.

Again, thank you for your comment. It made me think.

The blog title says it all really. I've submitted the first three chapters of "Eternally & Evermore" and expect it will post in short order. Later tonight, I'll queue up the rest of the chapters for auto-posting.

This is from the Author's Note to E&E...

"Eternally & Evermore" started life as a rewrite and extension of the first ever "long" short story I wrote, "Reunion", but quickly morphed into something much bigger and very different. Whilst Will and Matt are quite similar characters even if they are at different stages of their lives, Amy and Kelly are very different, at least, they are as adults, having had very different journeys through life.

So if you've previously read Reunion you may find some of the early scenes in particular quite familiar. Not quite "copy & paste" scenes, but certainly "based on".