Writing the Tale of X and Y has been as much a task of persistance as it has a labour of love. There have been many times
I have considered just giving up on this endeavour. I have continued largely because of four things:
a) the support of my friends
b) the support of my daughter
c) the support of and desire for my wife to read The Tale of X and Y
d) wanting to see the end of my characters journey
When I wrote Emblem Divide, my first novel, I read my wife the first 30,000 words that I had written during University. It took
me a further 6 years to complete the book. Consequently I can understand completely, her nervousness at starting another of my
works. Will it take a year to complete? Six? Will it ever be finished. However, the drive to complete it to enable her to read
the completed work, is one of the main factors keeping me going, that and wanting to give my characters the end they deserve.
Weighing up when to break from exact rhyming has been hard for me. The progression of the story, and of the character writing it,
has, I believe, led to a relaxation of his style and character. I have tried to reflect this in his rhyming and sentence structure.
This book, 2 of three in total, was supposed to be finished before Christmas 2018, but took a little longer to round out. I vividly
remember looking at the last few lines of chapter 10, trying to decide how to round it out. How much should I include? How many reveals should I make? How much should I explain? It seemed that there was far too much to fit into the last chapter. So I took the
decision to end it almost there and then. Saving many of the reveals for the next book, which I feel is ultimately the
best decision.
I write this at the completion of Part 2. One more book is planned. I hope to finish this story by the Summer of 2019.
Thank you for continuing to follow The Tale of X and Y.
Peter Savage
January 2019