Blog
November 2018
Tuesday 6th November 2018
When I first started to do BLOGS for my website, I set myself the goal of trying to always turn out a new one the first of every month. Plans this month have gone haywire. I started November's BLOG on October 31st and I'm still struggling. It isn't that I don't have any thoughts—it's just that I'm finding it difficult to organize them.
First, we are approaching the 100th Anniversary of the end of World War I, and although I had a pretty good schooling on The Great War (always wondered about that title!) I have felt the need to learn more. I had a great uncle (British) who died in WWI and my grandfather (British) served as a medic in Malta and Thessalonika. With a raft of TV programs now available about WWI I tuned in to learn more. The footage is devastating; the carnage, the sacrifice, the fear—what Europe and then the rest of the countries involved in the conflict put its young men and women through, to me, was horrific. I can't imagine living through what these men and women did; I can barely manage to watch it from the safe distance of 100 years on the TV. I am singing in a choir for a Remembrance Concert. Our church has been adorned with poppies and WWI soldier memorabilia, as are other churches and cenotaphs all over the country. But somehow it just doesn't seem enough.
The second reason for my restlessness seems trite in view of my thoughts above. But nevertheless, there are no less than 3 books spinning in my head. Working on my books often takes place after hours—likely as not in the wee hours. I can literally lie awake half the night trying to work out how to solve a problem for my characters. Right now I'm trying to figure out a way to get my couple Nina and Nathan Trask, from my Breaking Camp Mystery Series, out of the way of a dust storm. I won't reveal more details, but I need the dust storm. And Nina and Nathan need to survive it. Their story is being written and re-written in my head at all hours.
My thoughts have been scrambled lately, taking me from the death and destruction of an all too real WWI to an imaginary dust storm in western USA. I often feel guilty that I am only interested in writing fiction, and that these are stories where good always triumphs. But I am also thankful I have the creativity to be able to escape down into my books; at the moment they give me a temporary relief, especially in the midnight hours, from my humble attempt to understand and bear witness to the wretchedness of The Great War, 100 years on.
