Endings
Endings have been on my mind rather a lot recently.
For me this is not usually the time of year to think about endings. Summer is here, as much as it ever is on this windy island home of mine and although the solstice has passed and I’m aware that the evenings will be growing shorter from now on, it’s still warm and there’s sunshine between the inevitable Manx showers.
There are some life stages slowly coming to an end though. Both my offspring are in their twenties now and my son has recently moved out to share a house with friends. My daughter is back home along with her partner, but it’s temporary; they’re viewing houses and hope to buy their first house soon. It will be the first time that I’ve really experienced an empty nest and that will definitely be an ending to be marked in some way. It’s also a new beginning.
But I’m not deceived that my slightly melancholy sense of the end of something important has been caused by my children moving on with their lives. It is changes in the lives of my fictional offspring which are causing me to pause and reflect. For the past eight years my working life has been dominated by a series of books called the Peninsular War Saga. I’m now working hard on book ten and there are constant reminders as I write that the Peninsular War is coming to an end.
Dear Readers, don’t panic. This doesn’t mean the end of my writing career or even the end of time spent with these characters. I’ve always promised that I’d follow Paul van Daan and the 110th light infantry through the Battle of Waterloo and I have every intention of further books featuring some of the characters from my most popular series. I also have the Manxman books to pick up and my new Age of Sail series for Sapere Books which is ongoing in the background.
Still, when the fighting ends in the vicinity of Toulouse in April 1814 nothing will ever be quite the same. Wellington’s Peninsular army was gradually broken up over the next months. Some regiments went home to England. Others were sent to America to fight in the closing stages of the War of 1812. Some would later go further afield to Britain’s expanding colonies in places like India and South Africa. But they did not all go together.
I’ve recently published a collection of short stories entitled Brothers in Arms. As I’ve stressed in the blurb, most of these stories aren’t new; they’ve been published on my website and are still available for free. The only exception is the title story, which I wrote specifically for this collection and which won’t be available anywhere else. The title for the story and the collection was suggested by my editor and although the phrase has been used so many times before, I loved it for this book because it says so much about how I’ve come to view my characters over the years.
For six years the men of Wellington’s army and the women who accompanied them fought and died over the hills and plains of Portugal and Spain, through the heights of the Pyrenees and into France itself. For eight years I’ve been writing about them. Some of the stories have been bloody, brutal and tragic. Others have been funny. I’ve tried to portray these people as flawed human beings, living their lives in the midst of war.
It’s gone better than I ever expected. When I decided to take the independent publishing route I was just grateful to anybody for reading my books. Every good review was a celebration and every bad one was a tragedy. I’ve come a long way since then.
Back in 2017 I wrote a short piece on my blog about how difficult I found it to call myself a writer. These days I’m proud to tell people what I do. I do it full-time and I no longer say it with an apologetic tone. I have the best job in the world and it isn’t going to end when Paul, Carl, Johnny and the rest of their brothers in arms say goodbye to each other after Toulouse. It isn’t even going to end after the bloody Waterloo campaign.
I will feel sad though. There’s a strong urge to try to find ways of keeping them all together. Above all I’ve loved writing about the bonds of friendship and loyalty forged in those long years of war. I won’t do it because it wouldn’t be realistic. Over the coming years, they’ll never forget each other. Some of them will remain with the army, in their current regiments and go off on new adventures. Others will choose to settle quietly at home, making up for lost time with wives and families. Some may decide to forge a new and interesting path. My brain is teeming with ideas.
Some may not be going home at all. There are still several months of fighting to go and then there’s Waterloo. The Peninsular War Saga isn’t over yet, but I – along with my characters – can see the end approaching. We’re all going to share a sense of mingled joy and sadness along with a sense of pride at how much we’ve achieved together. We’ll also be looking ahead to see what we can achieve next.
Last night I had dinner with my editor and close friend Heather Paisley from Dieudonne Editorial Services. She’s been eagerly following the progress of book ten as she’s an enthusiastic reader as well as the woman who deals with commas so that I don’t have to. Unexpectedly she asked a question.
“How far are you through this book. I mean have you worked out yet where it’s going to end?”
I hadn’t realised until that point that I couldn’t really answer her. When I finished the previous book I thought there was so much still to do that there would probably be two clear books before the war was over. Now that I’m in the middle of this one I’m not so sure. There are still several important battles to go but the Light Division isn’t always as heavily involved in them as in the rest of the war.
I admitted my indecision to Heather and talking it through with her helped to clarify things. Which turned out to be not very clear at all, but I’m happy with that. I know where my characters are going, both historically and in their personal lives and I’ve decided this time just to let them get there in their own time. I don’t want the end of this part of the series to meander on until everybody dozes off but I’m also not prepared to rush it just to get to the Grand Finale. This is not the final series of Game of Thrones, people.
My instinct is that I probably won’t reach Toulouse in this book but the following book will definitely take Paul and his men into peacetime. I want to do justice to these final battles because they were more than just a sideshow while the European powers fought their way towards Paris. Men still fought and died, right up to the end of the war.
So I’m just going to keep writing this and I’ll decide when to end it when I get there. I’m really enjoying book ten. There’s a lot of action right from the start but also some reflective moments as my characters contemplate the approach of the end of the war and the changes about to overtake them.
Of course unlike me, they have no idea that many of them will be back in the field facing Bonaparte himself the following year. That’s just an author’s privilege.
In the meantime I thought I’d share the opening paragraphs of An Inexorable Invasion, book ten of the Peninsular War Saga. I hope my readers are looking forward to it. I think you’re going to love it.
And for anybody new to the series, An Unconventional Officer is where it all began…
Southern France, December 1813
The forward pickets were relieved at dusk and were almost blue with cold by then; blowing on numb fingers to keep them nimble enough to load and shoot a musket if necessary. The changeover was usually accompanied by cheerful greetings and a good deal of banter as the departing sentries described how miserable the posting was going to be while their replacements scoffed at them for being softer than the camp women who would probably make a better job of guarding the outposts.
For weeks, the Light Division had set their picket line so close to the French that it had led to a few skirmishes and a good deal of fraternisation. This was particularly bad among the German hussars who often accompanied them because they had quickly discovered that the opposing French cavalry vidette was also provided by a German regiment. The opposing sets of cavalrymen spent much of each day in friendly conversation but this evening brought an unpleasant shock. Along with the relieving pickets, provided by a company of the 110th light infantry and a dozen cavalrymen from the 9th Dragoons, rode a tall figure on a big roan gelding.
The officer’s uniform was hidden by a dark greatcoat but every one of the pickets immediately recognised the commander of the third brigade of the Light Division. He was accompanied by his ADC, a slim young man in a grey cloak on a neat bay mare. Both reined in, staring in surprise at the scene before them. They had arrived just in time to find the cavalry chatting about the best fishing spots on the banks of the River Nive while the pickets from the 43rd light infantry were bartering for French brandy with half a dozen French infantrymen. They appeared to be offering the French packets of tea and what looked like wrapped packages of tack biscuits in return and these were being accepted.
There was a long, agonised silence as the two groups stared at each other.
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