Nearly there

I am within two chapters, two short chapters of completing the first draft of my next book Magick and I am very tempted to decide on a date to publish it on Kindle. I can hardly believe that this will be my seventh published book! I have others to be edited, two others, but I think they will have to wait as i feel on a bit of a roll with my Thomas Radwinter stories…

I would love to have my books published as printed books and to see them in book shops… but I don’t somehow think that will happen; however, I am very happy to publish them myself through Kindle Direct Publishing on Amazon, it means I have total control over everything… it also means I can’t blame anyone else for mistakes, errors, typos, or anything else!

The story of Magick is the search for a family’s ancestors; Thomas Radwinter’s maternal line is the Magick family and he finds they come from Cornwall originally; by going back through baptismal records, and marriages and deaths, and by trawling old newspapers he finds a tragic story. Not all of the story is told because as with most of us trying to find our family tree, there are bits missing, bits not recorded, and bits which will never be uncovered. It’s only on programmes like ‘Who Do You Think You Are?’ that all the answers are found. Thomas is also searching for a woman who went missing nearly twenty years ago; her mother is a friend of his and begs for his help… he doesn’t find the lost daughter – maybe that is for another book, but he discover things about her life which help her mother deal with her loss.

The third strand of the novel is the relationship between Thomas and his new lady, Kylie,  and her little boy; having been married to someone else for ten years, starting a new life is bound to have its little difficulties… especially when it comes to household tasks. Thomas thinks Kylie is washing his clothes on the wrong programme…

I continued to fold the damp clothes into the washing basket and then took out my phone. I would ring my sister-in-law Jill.
“What are you doing?”
I jumped and nearly had heart failure. My phone leaped out of my hand and landed on the washing.
I tried to think of some answer but just went into one of my stutters.
“If you want to ring Rebecca that’s fine, you don’t have to hide away to do it. If you don’t want me to hear your conversation I’ll go upstairs.”
“Ring Rebecca? Why would I do that?” I was puzzled now… how could Kylie think I could possibly want to ever speak to my ex-wife again.
“Well, who are you ringing then? You keep coming in here with your phone… if it’s not Rebecca who the hell is it?” She was upset, she was very, very upset.
“I was going to ring Jill…” it sounded stupid, as if I was lying. Kylie’s fierce eyes were very bright, shining with tears. “About my trousers…”
“Your what?”
Stumbling and embarrassed I tried to tell her… oh why hadn’t I mentioned it in the first place?
“I didn’t want to say anything, I didn’t want you to think I was being critical, and really I’m not, but it’s not the machine, I know it’s not, it’s working fine, but I think you’re doing it wrong, well, I don’t mean wrong, I mean maybe it’s just a little mistake, you didn’t notice, or maybe you didn’t realise…”
“Thomas I am going to hit you!”
“My trousers…” I said again.
“In a minute I am going to take your trousers down and smack your bottom… now will you talk sense!”
Tentatively I went to her and put my arms round her. “I think you’re washing our clothes on the wrong programme, my trousers are stretching, and Kenneil’s are shrinking.”
She looked at me with such astonishment that I blushed right up to my ears and even round the back of my neck. She is as tall as me and looks me straight in the eye.
I pulled at my waistband to show her and to my astonishment she began to laugh; she began to laugh so much that her eyes were watering and she made me laugh too… Marcus was right I should trust her… Kylie wouldn’t be upset by me mentioning that she’d made a mistake.
“You are the most adorable idiot in the world… you are so utterly lovable that I could kiss you, in fact…” and she kissed me…“Do you know why you are such an adorable idiot?”  I couldn’t imagine, but I didn’t really care… “I haven’t washed your clothes on the wrong programme, they are perfectly washed. The reason your trousers are all baggy is that you’ve lost weight.”
How could I have lost weight? All the years that Rebecca had put me on different diets and tried to get me to exercise, never with very much success… so how could I have lost weight? It wasn’t possible.
“You’re eating really healthily, you walk miles and miles with Kenneil and play with him all the time, you’re not sitting behind a desk all day, you have plenty of exercise!” she began to laugh at me again.