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.