Back in the black and white days of yore, when dragons still roamed the land and the internet was dial up, all that time ago, I wrote my first book.

I scribbled words together as a rebuff to that contentious ‘best opening line’ debate.  Many enjoyable books have poor openings, and many a great opening line is the highpoint of an extremely poor tale.

It was and remains ever thus.

However, I thought to myself what if I could write an opening line, and then what if I could take a tale all the way from ‘once upon a time’ all the way to ‘the end’?

My foray, my toe dipping moment was agonised over, written, rewritten, and then rewritten again.

I quickly appreciated just how hard it is to write that killer hook.

My offer was – It wasn’t just an isolated cliché, it was more than that, it was a burst of three hot angry and buzzing 7.62mm clichés that struck him hard fast and square in the chest.  They hurt, they stung, they burnt, and just because they could, they hurt him again.

Now, the merit or otherwise of an opening line, I appreciate, is such a subjective matter that has as much to do with prevailing fashions, audience whims as it does actual artistic merit.

A good opening line, or indeed not, it taught me so many lessons beyond stringing the words together.

From this opening line I created a 45,000-word tale.

The resulting book we named after the punishment given to Sisyphus that had him rolling the stone to the top of the hill only for it to roll back down again time after time after time…  an apt metaphor I thought for the (futile) actions of NATO (et others) in the far away plains and mountains of Afghanistan. 

Sisyphus’s Burden set the precedent for all future tales insofar as it was a true ‘pantster’ creation.  It was a journey of discovery as much for the writer as it is for the reader.  This approach has remained with every other tall tale that I’ve created.  I may start with the vaguest of destinations in mind, but the route to be taken is never known. 

My next offer to the world was the result of a pleasant debate around the visual differences (if any) between SteamPunk and Goth – with a slight detour taken to discuss one of my favourite books (take a bow Mr Stoker) Dracula. 

Is this taking us anywhere?

It is, hold on, this is longer than a tweet, but definitely shorter than a book written for a long Russian Winter, so, yes, back to the plot…

If we’d cracked the opening line conundrum AND completed that oft quoted novel that we all have inside everyone of us, then book two was free of any and all constraints – and so it turned out to be.

Many say, ‘stay in your lane,’ or ‘only write what you know’ or more bluntly NEVER attempt to write from the point of view of a character you are not – i.e. a woman, a minority that kind of thing.  How these folk think fiction works – I don’t know, but these are genuinely touted mantras (shocking isn’t it!).

Never one to really understand or indeed accept the rules my next offering was written about a five foot and two inches tall woman.

I chose to write about a woman, because my setting (the late 1880’s) was most definitely a ‘mans world’ AND I chose my female character NOT to be the busty amazonian in short shorts and tight shirts, or that simpering woman always waiting to get rescued by a man, nope with Amy I wanted to avoid those tropes and cliches. 

She’s my attempt at an ‘every woman’ character, a woman that many could relate to.  She fails, she is cut, she is violently beaten and abused, but she survives.  And this theme of violence against women was one I wanted to get right, not to abuse, not to trivialise or titillate.  Cuts hurt, scars remain, and nightmares come back.

Risks are taken, and real-world consequences paid.

We added into our mix a dash of SteamPunk with an eccentric professor and a gifted flying machine, and we sprinkled this tale with a liberal dose of magic, fairy tales and Irish mythology.

The rules say that such a tale should sit around 80,000 words – volume one sits at 130,000.  You are also told NOT to write a series before you’ve managed to sell book one…  Amy and her adventures are four complete tales with a fifth in the works.

All of this may explain why I’m currently failing to succeed in the traditionally published market – an industry seemingly dominated by cold and timid souls whose idea of risk taking is commissioning yet another ‘Twilight Saga’ teenage romance by numbers missive…

Could be that, or indeed my tall tales are indeed without merit – could be option B.    

So, while we contemplate the many mysteries of the publishing world, while we stare at that knot that ties the oxcart to a wall, while all these things happen, while the sands of life trickle through the timer, while all of this (and long sentences) continues, I wish you all the best that life has to offer – stay safe and hug the ones you love!!!