The Flyer Sequel

Time for an update on progress of the sequel to The Flyer. I’m happy to say that the book is very nearly finished, by which I mean I have two chapters to write, neither of which are very long. It’s possible I could cross the line tomorrow, or maybe the day after and since there’s a cyclone expected here at the weekend I may as well work. Providing the house doesn’t get blown away of course. Fingers crossed.

I thought I’d give a few teasers about what the book is about. I say ‘the book’ because though I’ve had a working title from the start I’m not sure If I’ll stick with it. I have a few others ideas scribbled on post-its around my desk. Once I do figure it out I can brief a cover designer. From brief to completion can take a couple of weeks so I need to get on to that to stay on schedule for my April release date. That means the kind people who offered to read the manuscript can expect it to arrive in their inbox very soon. As I’ll be busy rewriting and editing while you read, I’m afraid what you’re going to get is the hot-off-the-keyboard absolutely uncorrected version which will be rife with spelling errors, missed words, occasional inconsistencies in narrative and other cock-ups. Sorry about that. I’m looking for any kind of actual story feedback at all, but primarily I just want to know if you like what you read, and especially whatever you can tell me about any bits you didn’t like.

So, back to what the story is actually about. It takes up pretty much where The Flyer ended, with William and Elizabeth returning to England after their meeting in France in 1920. They reunite with Christopher who’s recovering at Pitsford from his self-inflicted war wounds. As William and Elizabeth prepare to announce their engagement an event that I won’t reveal here makes it important to know what William has been doing since the end of the war. At this point the story switches to America and is related from the point-of-view of a new character. Her name is Mona Curtiss and she is a seventeen year old country girl from a poor Illinois farming family. She dreams of escaping her life to go to California where the fledgling silent movie industry has produced stars like Mona’s favourite, Mary Pickford. One Sunday as Mona chafes against the restrictions of her small-town life, and having avoided going to church with the rest of her family, she is sitting in the shade of the porch of her home when she hears an unfamiliar sound. She goes out to the field and shielding her eyes against the sun she sees the first real airplane of her life. It is flying so low that she can see the pilot in the cockpit, looking down at her as she looks up. She waves and to her surprise the biplane comes back and lands in the field and once the noisy engine has stopped the young pilot climbs down to the ground and flashes her a grin. He flicks out a cigarette and tells her his name is Nick and he is with the flying show coming to town. As far as Mona is concerned he’s just about the most exciting thing that has happened in her young life, and he’s good-looking too.

This book alternates between England and America and follows the fortunes of both the original characters and some colourful new ones. In America the story begins in Illinois and the northern states where William and Nick have teamed up to become barnstormers performing air-shows in front of the populations of small towns. It moves on to Florida and eventually New Mexico and California where Mona gets her introduction to the picture business. Amid the daring and the glamour there are tangled love affairs, jealousies and rivalries that sometimes lead to violence and tragedy, and through it all, Elizabeth and William struggle with the powerful feelings they have for one another while fate seems determined to keep them apart.

I think that gives a little flavour of the kind of story it is. Like The Flyer it is essentially a love story, but I think it’s fair to say the sequel is faster-paced and has a few more twists and turns along with some quite different settings. I’ve enjoyed writing it and I’m slightly surprised that I managed to stick to my schedule of go-to-whoa in five weeks without (I hope) making too many compromises in the quality of either the writing or the story. In fact over the past few days I’ve been considering writing the third part of the series more or less straight away, something I was intending to do later in the year. I’ve become quite interested in early Hollywoodland (as it was known then – it was actually a real estate development originally) and I’d like to write some more about it. I also touched lightly on Oswald Mosley and the rise of the fascist movement in Europe during the 30′s and I think that’s something I’d like to weave into the next episode too. It would feature the next generation of characters, and of course I’ve laid the foundations for all of that already.

Anyway, stay tuned for more information soon. And a title.