I remember the first time I actually finished a novel. I was quite young, probably about twenty-five, and the book in question was an Ealing-style comedy about the inhabitants of a Norfolk village which becomes the set for a popular TV comedy. I don’t have a copy of it, which is probably a mercy, as it’s fair to say that I only really hit early-season form in two subsequent novellas (also set in Norfolk, where I was living at the time), both of which attracted interest from publishers, without ever gaining an offer.
On reflection, that’s probably a good thing, too, as I was in no way ready to be a published author at that age, and I’d only have made a colossal mess of the whole thing, and probably embarrassed myself greatly. There is a theory that that’s what I’m doing now, twenty-five years later, but I'm probably better equipped to deal with it now.
I suspect that authors vary substantially in their response to typing the words THE END. My own emotions always include a sense both of relief, and of loss. Relief, because in a lot of cases – even now, having written over a dozen novels – I’m still quite often not sure that I will actually get to the end; and loss because, in most cases, I’m not actually sure that I want to.
The latter emotion has led me, on occasion, to respond to the situation simply by starting another novel. On at least two occasions in the recent past, I’ve typed THE END, got up for a walk round and a visit to the bathroom, re-filled my glass of cider, sat down again and started the next book, the shortest gap on record between ending and beginning being thirteen minutes.
All of this is germane, of course, because I’m just about to publish my third novel under the name Michael Tyne, and the last of my Shattered Land series, Jerusalem. This brings to an end a project which has been with me, on and off (mainly off), for ten years. I first began The Last Five Days sometime back in about 2007, writing in a tiny, freezing-cold pantry off the kitchen of a 300-year-old cottage, on a computer which was almost as old as the cottage itself. It’s a project which has encompassed four computers, two house moves, a relationship break-up (we got back together, thankfully), the growth of my son to majority and a seven-year case of writer’s block.
In fact, it goes back even further than that, because several of the characters appeared in a comic bedtime story I wrote for my son, which takes it back to about 2004, when I was still grinding out the hard yards as a head waiter. And, in fact, the bedtime stories sprang out of a comic fantasy I wrote even earlier still, back in 1997, when the aforementioned offspring was but a toddler, and I was still living with his mother on the beautiful island of Bermuda.
You may be sure, then, that it was quite an emotional moment when I finished it. It’s difficult to let go. In fact, not a week after finishing the first draft, I found myself sketching out a potential sequel, set in America, five years later, mainly because I was struggling with the idea of letting those characters go. That sequel ain’t going to happen; I realised that I’d taken the characters absolutely as far as I could take them, and any further would be too far. Then something far more powerful captivated me, and that’s the actual next book you’re going to see from me.
I’ve written elsewhere (with some exaggeration for comic effect) about the travails I went through in writing Jerusalem. Some books come easily, some come hard. Leaving aside that hideous case of writers’ block which hit about half-way through, The Falling Fire was a breeze; Jerusalem, by contrast, made me work, and then work again. It’s impossible to view the result dispassionately, even more so than is usually the case with one’s own work. I can only say that I did the job to the best of my heart and ability, and that I’m satisfied.
The rest is up to you.