I pinch myself that I got the chance to tweak Bloodlines (settle the matter of a certain horse going missing and the like) and now it's out everywhere for many other readers to get to know the characters who still linger and have hung around for almost eight years.
Here's my launch speech when we released the NZ version back in 2010 (apologies for the undignified hitching up of my pants). It tells a little about the process and does go some way to show how much I have needed the support (and input) of exceptional people.
The thing which struck me, re-watching that video five and a bit years later, is remembering how much I was going through at that time and yet I did not give up doing what I was passionate about: writing, supporting my family, teaching teenagers. I'm quite a different person now (though still lively and friendly and honest like I am in the video) and I believe I am a much better writer.
You know, many days I wish I wasn't a writer because there is a restlessness I can never assuage - there is always something I could do to improve what I've written and, even if I finish a book, my mind is incessantly combing over the details looking for burrs and ragged threads. I never get that sense that 'it is finished'. Much simpler life to spend time in the veggie garden and come in at the end of the day, job done.
Both Banquo's Son and Bloodlines have received some amazing reviews on Amazon and Good Reads - amazing to me in that one person can absolutely love the novel and give it four or five stars and another can hate it and give it one. This situation of 'becoming more known' has forced me to pull back from the books. I cannot be responsible for how a reader will react - I have let the novels out into the world and they no longer belong to me. I don't LIKE getting bad reviews but I appreciate that someone somewhere thousands of miles from me has read my words, sentences, stories; met my characters and watch my battle scenes and has engaged. There's something strangely cool about that.
So, I raise up my cup of coffee to Fleance, my boy, who is no longer mine and wish him and his band of brothers good heart and health as they suffer the slings and arrows made by the pen of this outrageous author*
*apologies to Will
