On Writing the Son of Perdition

I think I was about nine or ten when my mother told me that when Jesus returns, fire and brimstone would fall from the heavens and consume everything and everyone. Since then, my overactive imagination constantly tried to visualize what that fateful day would look like. Needless to say, this resulted in an interest in the end times and a constant yearning to find out more about the Second Coming and the end of the world.

After years of reading, research and mails to experts, I felt that I was ready to write a non-fiction book about the end times called, Wake Up! or something to that effect. I created chapters based on how events would unfold and wrote a fictional intro that was to set the pace for the rest of the book.

Fate, it seems, had other plans…

I gave the preface to a colleague at work and asked her for her opinion. She read it, handed it back to me and then asked for the rest. I then gave her the first few pages of chapter 1 which she read in silence and then handed back to me with a shrivel in her nose. “What’s this?” she asked me. I told her that this was the “rest” that she asked for and she told me that the fictional bit was awesome, but the non-fiction… not so much.

This inspired me to ask a few more people for their opinions and it seemed that everyone was more interested in the fictional preface than the facts presented in Chapter 1.

I immediately started planning the story while consuming as many how-to-write books as I could get my hands on and when I finished Chapter 1 of The Son of Perdition, my colleague merely looked at me after reading it and asked, “Where’s the rest?”

It took me two years to write the story and on more than one occasion did I consider trashing the entire thing. Those were two years where my wife heard nothing but talk of The Son of Perdition, morning, noon and night. Despite this, she encouraged me to keep at it.

Writing the novel was only half the challenge. Editing and trying to land a publisher was another nightmare in itself; one which I will share with you in up and coming blog posts.

If you find yourself trudging through a novel and it feels that there is no end in sight, just keep going. Trust me; it’s worth it at the end of the day and I don’t think that there’s anything on earth as satisfying as finally writing the last sentence of that dragon you’ve been trying so hard to slay.