the spark

So far I’ve had six book events to launch the third book, Dead Reckoning, in the Irish Troubles series.  One of the most common questions I receive is – what are you going to write your fourth book about?

I understand people would be curious.  All writers are different; some have the next book plotted out in their imagination and are ready to write.  I am not that writer.  I honestly explain to the audience that I have no idea what my next book will be, I don’t even know the genre for sure.

Audience members are satisfied with my response, even if disappointed.  However, the question nagged at me.  I want to write the draft and have it edited next year with a goal of publishing again in 2020.  I have a publisher so the challenge of sending out query letters and searching for a publisher is, thankfully, completely gone.

I toyed with the idea of changing genres.  I’ve had a great notion of writing mystery – not the thriller version – the brainy, quirky detective type – Poirot.  Of course that’s been done so I dropped that idea.  Next I considered writing a political thriller – there’s just so much raw material available now.  Then Paterson and Clinton released their book, The President is Missing.  I could never compete with that.

I really wanted to get away from another Irish story but I decided to return to the tried and true.  A friend once suggested I write a novel about William Butler Yeats and his unsuccessful love life.  I did a little research and didn’t find it interesting myself.  The Irish American News had a story about a mass grave of children found in a small village in West Ireland.  The story is intriguing but too dark.
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Finally I returned to IRA history.  There is one larger than life character that has had a number of biographies – but not fiction.  Michael Collins was the father of the modern Republic of Ireland.  Now there is a story.