Khaleel Datay's Blog - Posts Tagged "honour"

A few months after completing my first book, I started writing the second book as a follow up novel. Problem is I found second time a lot harder. You keep second guessing yourself. I wonder if other writers have the same problem. First time round I just sat down and wrote with a general idea of where the plot was moving. Along the way I did my research and wrote some more. Things more or less flowed. This time round plotting has been a lot harder. Not that there are a shortage of ideas. One has to be so careful not to get too elaborate with the plot. A good story is still a good story. The first book was about a former soldier who is also an academic in Eastern languages and history. A product of a mixed marriage, father English and mother Kashmiri. Although the story is a thriller about finding a terrorist and stopping a terror plot in Mumbai, there are also some deeper questions asked. Questions about friendship, betrayal, and love. Do we really know ourselves? Do we really know who our parents are, what they were before we got to know them as our parents. Respect, honour, and integrity, are becoming foreign concepts to many people. While we seem to be getting smarter technically, we seem to be regressing ethically, with disastrous consequences. The protagonist in my books, Nick Winter, is someone who suffered racial prejudice in his youth and in his adulthood has taken it upon himself to help others. A good soldier, he always acts with honour and respect. In the second book he seeks vengeance for a wrongful act. Some would say that's a bad thing, but he sees it differently. When the woman he loves is brutally sexually abused, his response is to fight for her honour. What if he gets the chance to take his revenge but is forced to stand down in the interests of the greater good. Can he do that? Can we do that?
At the moment I'm at a point where I'm adding layers to the main plot idea to flesh out the story. Its been lots of fun doing this. Events in South Africa and elsewhere in the world certainly are keeping writers on their toes and providing endless plot material. After years of saying writing is something I've always wanted to do, I'm finally there. I'm writing and enjoying every moment.