I have been busy! My status as a key worker has been revoked due to health concerns. Basically, I have been identified as vulnerable and my employer has decided that I should remain at home. This disappoints me as I felt that my work was worthwhile and I have already been exposed to the Coronavirus, but I also understand why my employer feels it is unwise for me to continue going into work. As I cannot work from home this has given me an opportunity to get on with my book, which is exactly what I have been doing!

To begin with let me say that this book is proving very satisfying to write. I have completed some 14,000 words to date. They are rough words to be honest. Not as rough as those in my first draft but they will need polishing before I can say this project is finished. That is okay though, that is the way I like to write.

So, I have written the opening scene, an attack by various agents working for various governments on a mountain fortress that is the home of a man who appears to be threatening world peace in 1933. Some of these characters are going to be sacrificed to the action, like those actors in Star Trek that wear red uniforms and always seem to get killed first. One who is not going to suffer that fate is Artemisia Montessori. I am not sure where she came from, well, Italy obviously, but I was talking in terms of imagination, not geographically. Almost immediately she started using excellent dialogue, a mix of Italian and English, that I really enjoyed writing.

This is one of the fascinating and intriguing things about writing fiction, the creation of characters. Artemisia does not appear in the first draft. When I began writing the assault I felt the presence of an effective and dangerous woman would be of benefit to the story. I have always liked strong female characters. All of my books have at least one and some more than that. I remember Conan the Barbarian complaining in one of his adventures about how useful it would be if women would pick up a sword and help with the fighting rather than cowering in corners waiting for him to do all the killing. A review of popular culture after reading that comment revealed that what Robert E Howard observed in the 1930’s was still true some fifty years later and is, largely, still true today.

Artemisia Montessori immediately required a back story. I decided that she was the daughter of an aristocratic family, catholic, well educated, and expected to marry a husband from a similar background and raise a family and that this was to be the sum total of her ambition. Of course, she does not want to do this and, through the help of a cousin, successfully enlists into the Organizzazione per la Vigilanza e la Repressione dell’Antifascismo (Organization for Vigilance and Repression of Anti-Fascism). After a brief spell pursuing anti-fascists Artemisia is seconded to the Servizio Informazioni Militare, the Military Information Service. Her attributes make her an excellent field agent, which also entitles her to work overseas, a necessary requirement if she is to be present at the storming of an arch-villain’s secret fortress in America!

Sometimes, characters seem to write themselves. Artemisia certainly did. This was the easy part, however, the difficult bit comes in her development as a person. If a writer wants their readers to care about their characters, and all successful writers do, then personal development is a necessity. It has to be believable but it cannot be clumsily contrived. When the book opens Artemisia’s first act is to shoot someone in the head and refer to herself as a devil in disguise; quite an introduction. Clearly, she has to be more than an assassin if she is going to last throughout the whole of the book, not that I have decided for sure that she will yet. Her chances are pretty good but I have to find something deeper within her. I have a notion as to what that might be and as one of the themes of the book is redemption I can see a means to bringing out the positives in her character without seeming contrived at all.

I am aware that in the passages that follow the storming of the fortress she seems to have become a passenger and is in danger of retreating into one of those corners that Conan complained about, but I am not overly worried. There is plenty of room for improvement. At the moment the writing is aimed at developing the story and the plot, it is the events that this gives rise to that also creates the opportunity to develop the characters. There will certainly be episodes that will suit a woman who can shoot men in the head at the drop of a hat and, in the aftermath, give rise to moments of reflection when she might discover that her life up to that point has not been all that it could be. She is also forming an interesting relationship with a definite central character, but it is not one based on romance. I am not sure where this will go yet, that is writing that I have to do. It may not become anything or it me develop into one of the key aspects of the book. I can only sit down at my computer and see where my imagination takes the story.

I love writing!