Finished

 14th October 2016

Iona has set sail. On Monday, I cut the mooring line and set her into open waters. Why is a book a she? Because books are boats that navigate deep waters, and a boat is always a she.  A good book shifts us onto a different perceptual plane, takes us off dry land and tests our balance.
My agent, getting ready for the Frankfurt Book Fair, says he is too crazy-busy to read my book super quick, but the launch was the important thing. Now I have to think about revising Book 2 in light of Book 3, but first I'm going to take some days off, just a breather to take in the scent of autumn, slow down time to the speed of a drifting leaf and rid myself of that feeling that I have to do anything at all.  Nothing stymies the creative flow quicker than Gotta.  It's true Mozart in the court of Leopold was under pressure to engage his genius, but I think he would have done it anyway.

It was just a matter of who to hand the sheet music to - the creation was a constant flow. But I'm not Mozart - this stuff isn't flowing out of me non-stop. I keep having to go back into the cave and put on my headphones, block the outside, replug, reboot. Roll some billiard balls.
I am anxious to finish this time-travel series, because time travel and/or historical fiction is never anything I thought I would do. I write literary fiction, as I am quick to point out to anyone who his interested. That's literary with a capital L.

And yet, and yet, in this book series, I may be touching on the most important question of all my writing: how did our race get to such a soul-less state in its evolution? What fork in the road did we take that wasn't the one that would make all the difference (pace Frost, this keeps coming up...)? It's an important question (for which I have one possible answer) because we have reached a time of great confusion and turmoil. We have hung our hats on the wrong hook for too long, and now we need to ask why.
Iona, by Claire R McDougall, coming to a book store near you!