Me finishing Dead Centre II, my latest novel. Photo by David Taylor

 Dead Centre II is Finished

I have always thought that photos like this were posed, but this one honestly wasn’t. I was on the point of finishing, Dead Centre II, my latest novel at my usual watering hole, when my friend David Taylor came to visit.

“Don’t say a word,” I whispered only one sentence to go and I’ve finished my latest novel.” Anyway, he sat down, kept stumm, and took this just as I was finishing. It was great timing If he had gone in to order a beer before coming over, he would have missed it. A second after this photo was taken, I looked up and said “Dead Centre II’ is finished!”

Happy Saint David’s Day to all you who are reading this on the day it was written or any number of years to the day later . March 1st is the Patron Saint of Wales’ Day, for all those of you who don’t know – the majority, I suspect.

I’m glad it’s St. David’s Day, it gives me something else to celebrate – yesterday’s excuse was finishing my book – because, finishing a book like that leaves an empty feeling behind with me. I imagine it’s like any big project, it consumes most of your thought for the duration and when it’s finished… then what?

As an indie author, the answer is simple, read it and edit it, then reread and re-edit it, then put it up for sale and market it. However, that is not as satisfying as writing the thing. Like riding a horse is more exciting than polishing the tack. I want to get on with the next one, but that would be stupid at this moment in time. First the editing and marketing of this one has to be done – if you can say that you are ever done with marketing. That’s an on-going, permanent feature of my life from now on.

Besides that, I don’t have an idea for a new novel, although I want to write a sequel to ‘Tiger Lily of Bangkok‘ later in the year. This happens from time to time, although I have a simple cure. I have written a series of novellas that I call the ‘Megan Series‘ (see the header of this page for details). Whenever, I get stuck like this, I write one or more of them until a satisfactory idea reveals itself to me. The fact that there are twenty-one novellas in the series so far does not mean that I am often stuck though 🙂

Looking out of the window before me in my office yesterday, I noticed that a root in one of the tree stumps my wife uses for growing orchids in, has transformed itself into the head of a sleek-looking dog’s head and neck. Can you see it as well? It looks as if she has spotted something at two o’ clock

Dog’s Head in old Stump’s Roots

By the way, that is not an old po in there next to the dog (clue), it is an as-yet-unused flower pot. I will admit, that as I am writing this, I cannot see the head in the photo – it is too small – still perhaps you can, but the flower pot looks more and more like a chamber pot.

It is nearly time for my daily visit to Jem’s shop around the corner – immortalised in my series ‘Behind the Smile‘ as Nong’s, so I’m signing off for today, but taking my brand-, spanking-new manuscript with me to read over my couple of beer Changs (Thailand’s most popular beer) and very nice they are too.

Anyway, I’m happy that Dead Centre II is finished, now I only have to sell a few copies 🙂

All the best,

+Owen

PS: Someone returned a ‘Dead Centre’ to Amazon yesterday – the first one ever. I like to think they bought it, copied it and are now going to pirate it, rather than that they didn’t like it, but that book is rather gory, I have to admit, but then suicide bombing necessarily is.

PPS: the ‘+’ before my name above is pandering to Google’s inefficiencies – they won’t recognise me without it 🙁

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