Tom – Page 144

Krefeld First School (pencil) — Krefeld First School, Krefeld, Germany

My featured graphic is a drawing I completed of Krefeld First School in Krefeld, Germany. Our son went there after a short time attending Wavell Junior School in Catterick. The drawing was to go on to become the front cover of official handouts from the school featured. Apart from the notion of advancing steadily I feel it’s worth noting that there was a simple, but accurate compass painted on the playground. How military is that! That was rhetorical, so please don’t inundate me with suggestions. Why mention the compass? Apart from advancing it gives a loose connection to going in the right direction. Okay, I’m stretching a point. No, I refuse to say a compass point.

If you’re still with me the whole theme of advancement is to do with my romantic thriller, ‘Ten Days’. I’ve now completed the first two drafts and things are going well with the third. In an effort to give more substance to the two main characters I’ve allowed them both a chapter apiece at the start. They had previously been sharing both the first chapters but I’m now happy with the change. Apart from saying it’s romantic and a thriller I can confirm that the main story takes place in Panama, Central America.

For the time being I’ll withold the jacket blurb and the front page strapline but I can now confirm I’ve requested our son Andrew to design the front cover for me. As an artist I have ideas, but Andrew is creative naturally and professionally so it would be foolish of me to go it alone.

What’s next? Of course we should really look forward if we’re calling this post Advancing Steadily. My intention is to complete the third and final draft by early October. I will have five sets of the manuscript printed and give them to a variety of pre-selected readers with a standard questionaire to give me feedback. If all goes well I will self-publish as an E-book in November.

Andrew's Walls — The 7 foot x 4 foot mural in preparation

I would suggest that it’s accepted, not all foundations are to do with buildings. For example in my first graphic I’ve demonstrated how I prepared our son’s bedroom wall (a few years ago) before we hung up his Airfix models from the ceiling. It would have been okay to hang them up, but with the backdrop of the Red Arrows in a flypast and the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight underneath … now there’s a more complete scene.

Once the wall was painted we then moved on with the job that was well underway; finishing off a couple of models to hang in the corner of the room in front of the mural. So a lot of work was done before, then some support put in place … and the job was complete.

Andrew's Wall plus Airfix (Gouache) — The corner complete with haphazard ariel display

Once again, as is my way, I’ve tried using some sort of analogy for what’s going on with my writing. My action thriller ‘HAWK’, based in Glasgow, is already written up to the end in it’s second draft and waiting to be re-written a third time. I’m happy enough with that for now. I’ve still got my character profiles and relevant information so I’m confident with where I have to go on that one.

My more recent project, which is a collaboration with a distant friend is a romantic tale, interspersed with action. The working title is ‘TEN DAYS’ and it’s set for the main part in Central America. It is now reaching the end of the second draft and as it happens is taking up almost every waking hour. You, dear reader will be able to see from that … I am keen to see it completed.

My aim is to get TEN DAYS completed first and then I have a chosen few who will read it and give me some honest feedback. If it gets the go-ahead from those readers or needs a little more work then it will be dealt with quickly. I’d like to get it up to publishable standard by end of December this year. My aim is self-publishing as an e-book. I have cover and blurb ideas in hand already.

So what’s all the foundation stuff about then? I know I will be responsible for marketing so in an effort to broaden my platform, apart from this blog with it’s new domain name and Facebook, I have joined Twitter and about.me … and added my pages to Google. There will be the small matter of maybe taking out an ad in a local newspaper but we’ll see if I consider that a reasonable idea when I’ve got the book written.

I have to say that although it’s time-consuming and hard work I am thoroughly enjoying the novel writing process. The need for more than one draft becomes fairly obvious after the first attempt at the story and then the second draft highlights just how much more work has to be done! I will get there and one day in the not too distant future I’ll write of it here. I still have no wish to be famous, only successful! That in essence is what all the foundation stuff is about.