Book 4: REMEMBER BRAVE ACHILLES seems to have been received well (that’s always good!) and Book 5: George Washington’s Ghost is written! Book 6: Imperial Crisis is coalescing in my and I now have titles for books 7 through to 10.
Um… That sounds a bit simple, plain-sailing etcetera. It is not, of course. For one, it is always a while before you discover if a series is viable creatively and (as sordid as it might sound) economically. I am a professional author; and paying for the groceries matters so one cannot always be precious about these things and tends to concentrate the mind marvellously!
When I started the NEW ENGLAND project, I was worried about how easily I could switch – and witch about from one to the other – from the TIMELINE 10/27/62 world to a 1970s in which the American Revolution had failed two centuries ago. Oddly, that has not, thus far at least, been any kind of problem.
It is pleasant to be deliberately writing ‘shorter’ books; although, ‘shorter’ is all a matter of degree, REMEMBER BRAVE ACHILLES is around 85,000 words long, and GEORGE WASHINTONG’S GHOST, although longer still less than 100,000 words, relatively ‘short’ in comparison to the most recent Timeline main series books. With the Timeline books, I tend to live with them for months on end, perhaps half-a-year, whereas as a NEW ENGLAND book is a month to six weeks of my life (plus another month later, spread over two or three months with other work, re-writing, visual and audio proofing).
I am already looking forward to working on Book 6: IMPERIAL CRISIS even though and I do not plan to start writing it until the spring of 2020.
Future publication dates:
17th February 2020 – BOOK 5: GEORGE WASHINGTON’S GHOST.
4th July 2020 – BOOK 6: IMPERIAL CRISIS.
Thus far, I have resisted the temptation to start penning short stories set in the New England universe: in this I have been somewhat stymied by having too much else on my plate. But one day…