Authors of fiction should wear their learning lightly, I feel. Research should subtly inform their writing, not dominate it, and the reader should never, ever feel as if they’re being lectured. After all, they picked up the book to be entertained and transported into another world, not sat down and told to pay attention, because there’s a quiz later.

It’s a widely-held view that fantasy as a genre is one in which the writer can pretty much dispense with research. It’s all made up, so as long as you make sure there are certain natural laws by which your world functions and you stick to them, you can do what you like. It’s your sandpit. You make the rules.

Except it’s not that simple. Even in fantasy, there are some elements where a little research will prevent your reader frowning and thinking “That’s not right.” I mean, they might write to you and complain.

For example, there’s likely to be horses in the book somewhere, so it pays to know the hairy end from the end with the teeth. How to get on and off. How far you can ride one in a day.

If the blokes on the horses are knights, you’d better know your hauberk from your pauldron, and where to find the vamplate (it’s the bit which guards your hand as you grip your lance, in case you didn’t know).

So I was sitting at my desk, putting the finishing touches to the second book of The Wild Hunt series, and I had a sudden thought. An epiphany, even. One of those moments of realisation which is often—nay, almost inevitably—followed by “Oh, shit.”

What I realised was that I have spent mumblety-mumble years thinking, dreaming and writing about folk for whom a sword is a part of everyday life, and I’ve never laid hands on one. Seen a few in museums and so on, but never actually wrapped my hand round a hilt.

My imagination’s done the work up to this point. I knew not to pick it up by the pointy end, for instance, and was fairly confident I could score at least 6/10 on a naming-of-the-parts pop quiz. I also knew that they don’t weigh nearly as much as people imagine, but even three pounds is going to feel like it’s ripping your arm out of its socket after half an hour’s earnest use.

What I didn’t know, and had to rely on my imagination for, was the specifics. Which muscles does it pull on as you start to tire? Where do you get the calluses, and what does it feel like in your hand when the sweat—and worse—begins to run? What does it feel like in your hand, full stop?

So I bought one. A replica of a 15th century longsword (also called a hand-and-a-half, or a bastard sword, depending on your era of origin and local preference). Not a lightweight copy of Andúril that comes with a fancy plaque to hang on the wall, but a traditionally-made, full tang, edge-ready, functional sword. And it’s sharp.

Well, I’m not going to know what a real sword feels like in my hand unless I’m holding a real sword, am I?

Apologies for the crummy pics–it’s pouring with rain and even with the lights on I can barely see what I’m doing. Click to make them bigger.

I had a crisis of confidence today.  These things happen from time to time, so I’m used to them.  Happened with the last book, and it’s a good bet that it’ll happen with the next one, too.  But it’s never pretty.

I work myself into a right old state.  I can’t seem to focus on the solution and go round and round the problem in ever decreasing circles until my ability to write anything from a shopping list upwards  just freezes.  Copious amounts of tea sometimes helps.  Copious amounts of chocolate, too–except I’m not allowed to eat that at the minute.

So there I was this lunchtime, teetering on the precipice of a full-on hissy-fit of frustration, when my Darling Beloved texts me a cheery message to see how I’m getting on.  Thirty seconds later I’m bawling my eyes out on the phone to him, snots bubbling, voice gone all high-pitched and wobbly, the works.  The last four chapters were utter crap <sniffle> they’d have to be rewritten again <sob> I’d never get this book finished in time <honk, blurt, wipe, wipe>… You get the picture.

Fifteen minutes later, I’m a different person.  I looked again at the offending four chapters and discovered that 75% of the problems were all in my head, and fixed them in less than 500 words, total.  Suddenly I’m on a roll, and everything’s clear.  Motivations are credible, bad guys are suitably chilling, and the dialogue I’d sweated over for days is clean and crisp and rapier-sharp.  All for the price of a few Kleenex.  Hurrah!

So you see, you should never underestimate the therapeutic value of a really good blub.  Sometimes it really does make you feel better.

Regular readers will know (don’t try to hide behind the sofa; I know there’s at least four of you) that I am busy finishing Book 2 of The Wild Hunt, Trinity Moon.

What you may not know is that as if MS wasn’t enough fun by itself, I’ve also been diagnosed with gallstones. Honking great gallstones, measuring 1.5cm across. The surgeon I saw at the hospital last Tuesday was quite impressed. I assured him that I do not do things by halves. Neither, it seems, does he.

He wants me to have an MRI scan to check that there’s no small stones (the technical term is gravel, seriously) in my bile duct, before he whips my gall bladder out. Ultrasound, like the one I had a couple of months ago that revealed the pesky stones in the first place, isn’t very good for looking at this because the bile duct lurks behind the bowel, and there’s air in the gut which doesn’t transmit the ultrasound very well. MRI, of course, is like one of Her Majesty’s VAT inspectors: it goes everywhere and sees everything.

Lovely chap, the surgeon. Warm hands, which is always a good sign, and a dry sense of humour. I am not in the least freaked-out by the prospect of any of the upcoming procedures–even if they can’t do a keyhole cholecystectomy and have to do a traditional large-incision, in-up-to-the-elbows job. My heart is plodding along at its regular resting rate of 59bpm and if I was any more laid back I’d be horizontal. So why am I finding it so hard to empty my head of all this health-related stuff and get back to the business of writing?

I’m staring down the barrel of a deadline. I’ve had the first instalment of my advance, so I’m on the company dime, as it were. I want to finish this book so I can make a start on the next one, because I want to find out what happens next. Powerful motivators all. So why can’t I write the last five chapters?

After a bit of a sticky patch I’d been going great guns again, and then WHAM! Straight into a brick wall. I was washing my hair in the shower, like you do, brain idling, and suddenly realised that the last chapter and a half had gone in completely the wrong direction and I didn’t know how to fix it.

Four days later, I still don’t. It’s not writer’s block, because I don’t believe in it, and we all know that stuff we don’t believe in doesn’t exist, like the monster under the bed. It’s an inability to focus.

I’ve turned off my music. I’ve taken myself out into the garden with the laptop, where the wireless doesn’t work reliably enough to allow me to get distracted by email or Facebook or reading other people’s blogs. I’ve even tried going back to pencil and paper to slow my thoughts down, let ideas take root. Nothing doing. Every time I sit down to sort this out my mind is flittering around like a butterfly in a meadow, never settling for more than a few seconds before it’s off to the next flower.

Argh.

The fact that I’m even blogging about it, instead of solving the problem, is just another example of my distraction. Why find answers when you can futz around talking about the question instead?

Double argh.

This is not a familiar place in which to find myself. I don’t like it. It smells strange and the people talk funny. Get me out of here!

In the last couple of weeks, I’ve had some very exciting news.  I’ve been told that I might have some roughs for the cover of Songs of the Earth to look at soon.  With my editor, we’ve finalised the cover copy a.k.a the bit on the inside flap that makes you, the reader, start salivating as you fumble for your credit card.  And I’ve got a tentative publication date.

Naturally, as Gollancz are still working the kinks out of their schedule for the first half of next year, there’s still an “ish” factor here, so I won’t be revealing the date until I know it’s firm, but it does mean that the countdown to launch has begun.

This is becoming alarmingly real.

Songs is moving from an electronic file wrapped up in a dream to something solid.  Tangible.  A physical object that I can hold in my hands and inhale that “new book” smell.  I cannot tell you how much that excites me.

It also terrifies me.  In a couple of months my editor will crack her knuckles and set to, and I imagine the process of delivering a final typescript that she’s happy with will be rather like childbirth.  There will be sweat and swearing and probably tears, and if things get really rough there might even be a little blood, before the finished book is smacked on the bum, weighed, measured, and packed off to production.

In the meantime, I’m not exactly sitting on my hands here.  I still have Trinity Moon to finish.  Although progress has been slow of late due to a variety of health-related issues (which also explain the infrequent updates to this blog), the strands are coming together into what I think will be a satisfying whole.  A bit darker than Songs in several ways.  A bit more menacing.

Watch this space.

Terry Pratchett once said in an interview that you’ve got to keep an eye on your secondary characters, or they’ll take over the show.  Turn your back for five minutes and there they are, merrily rearranging the plot to suit themselves, the blighters, and generally making more work for the poor put-upon writer.

I thought I might avoid that with Trinity Moon, since I was working from a synopsis (a heretofore unheard-of event, I might add, which has proved helpful and frustrating in equal measure).  Everything’s chugging along nicely, and I come to an action scene where Gair throws a lock on Ne’er-do-well No. 1 and laying his sword across the fellow’s neck, threatens to cut his throat.

Whereupon the strangest thing happens.  Ne’er-do-well No. 1 takes a firm grip on My Hero’s family jewels and purrs, in a very feminine voice: “Not if I geld you first, Empire.”

Eh?  Where did she come from?

<scrolls through preceding paragraphs>

Nope.  No girls there.  WTF?

So I continue typing, to see where I will be taken, and suddenly she’s sitting cross-legged on the table, twirling her dagger through her fingers and eating my dates.  Gair’s dates.  Whatever.  The saucy minx.  She’s got backstory, she’s got attitude, she’s sensual and snarky and inordinately fond of knives, and she’s made herself right at home in the story without so much as a by-your-leave.

I’ve just been mugged by my own imagination.  And I didn’t feel a thing.

On Thursday I had a further phone call from that nice literary agent to see if I’d received the client agreement in the post. I know it doesn’t mean anything yet, in the grand scheme of things, but this is indeed A Step in the Right Direction.  On the way home from work I bought a bottle of bubbly to celebrate–I’d expected a real struggle to score an agent simply because so many have an entry in Writers & Artists that says “No fantasy, thanks”–and allowed it to go to my head for a little while.

Then I had to knuckle down to the serious business of getting together a synopsis for Trinity.  First draft down, just a little tweaking to do; it’s a tad longer than I’d like.

The omens are that I’ve left myself a bit of a mountain to climb in order to wrap everything up in Book 3.  Forcing myself to focus on the plotting of Trinity and what I could and could not do with the characters and timescales has thrown into sharp relief just how ambitious I’ve been here, without me even realising it.  The curse of the pantser.

Pruning will have to occur, no doubt about it, but how much?  And where?  Do I go all bonsai on its donkey and force it to fit, or do I follow my organic instincts and let the tree be free, man?  I’m not sure yet.  My brain is still full of Bollinger.  Ask me again in the morning, when my brain will no doubt be full of Nurofen.

So I’ve started on Book 2 of “The Wild Hunt Trilogy”, “Trinity Moon”.  I confess, I’ve cheated a bit – there was a sub-plot in Book 1 that I was deeply attached to but it wasn’t deeply attached to the rest of the opening story arcs and just didn’t fit, timeline-wise.  So I cut it out, all 40-odd k of it, earlier this year and realised that it should have been in Book 2 all along, and I’d been trying to cover too much ground in Book 1.

It needs an edit, since it hasn’t had the same amount of attention that Songs has, which is what I’m doing now, and the excitement has started to build.  I’m getting that little wobbly buzz under my breastbone again, and I’m absolutely dying to get through the edit and start turning the plan into some real new chapters.

Oh, didn’t I mention?  I’ve actually got a plan for “Trinity”.  Me, the walking definition of a pantser, has A Plan.  I’ll have a synopsis next, just you wait.