the new series

I suppose I should finally break my silence on my new project. Especially since it's not new anymore because I've been working on it for at least six months now, albeit with a fairly vague definition of 'working on it'.

I'm now up to the point where I've mapped out the main plot points of the first book and sketched out a very general outline for the following three. The fifth book is only one line long at the moment and may never get any longer. I'm not entirely happy with the preceding plots, either, but I'll work on them. Most of the important characters have been nailed down, although they won't all keep their current names.

Anyway. I discovered these two characters shortly before I went overseas. Goodness knows what made me think of them. It was probably a mix of things; my obsession with sea-going characters (Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin, Horatio Hornblower) and my growing excitment about my own upcoming adventure.

Whatever sparked their creation, those characters saved my sanity and my happiness as I travelled. I lived mostly in my head for those three months and those two adventurers went everywhere with me. We rode in palanquins in Edo Tokyo, took a monkey into Notre Dame in Paris, got kidnapped by pirates along Italy's Amalfi coast, were intimidated by a wealthy prince in Florence and got homesick for our little village in Wales.

I wrote a few brief scenes while I was travelling (the only writing I did that whole time) and when I got back I began to sift through all the adventures for the bones of the plot. I had always known it would be more than one story - or rather, that the one, over-arching story would consist of several chronological stories - so I needed to assemble that. And that's where I'm up to.