Book V of The Talisman Series, The Crystal Palace, is now behind me. Or, to be exact, sitting in front of me, on my bookshelf, as a complete paperback.

This was a surprising book. I finished it in just 57 days—of which only 33 were actual “working on the book” days—after a full month of faffing around because I was afraid to face it.

I started the original manuscript in March 2017 and didn’t finish it until November. And even then, I had a lot of work to do to make it presentable as a Christmas gift for my G-sons. So much so, that I told my son that his boys wouldn’t be getting the annual book that year, figuring they wouldn’t mind, as the four books prior to that had fallen into that particular well without making an audible splash. However, my son said they would be disappointed, as they looked forward to them every year. It might have helped to have known that, but once enlightened, I doubled down and got a book to them in early January. A bit late, but at least they got it.

The trouble was the story. It just wouldn’t come together. It gave me such angst over the course of that year that I made several attempts to re-jig the series to make it seven-books long instead of eight, allowing me to leave that book out. No matter how I tried, however, I could not ignore the reality that The Book was necessary, as it introduced several key points in the overall story arc. And so, I persevered.

The end result, I am pleased to report, is satisfying.

Last week, while doing the final line edit, I noted that I was not—as is usually the case for any author finishing any book—totally sick of the story. I was, instead, quietly impressed that I had, over the course of 2017, sat and wrote all those words, then packed them away, to be revised and edited some six years later. That is quite a feat, and I’m sorta chuffed with it.

I am also glad to put this one behind me because now I can work on the next book, which, as I recall, also surprised me. Book V was always going to be a problem because I didn’t have the story clear in my mind, but I’d been eager to write Book VI, The White Feather, for some time, as it was a fun story and very firmly thought out. However, I had more trouble with that manuscript than any of the others, and ended up with a huge pile of disjointed scenes that I had to cobble into a truncated story for the G-boys that year.

And now I get to tackle that. It won’t be pretty, but once it’s done, all the hard graft will be behind me.

I hope.