{"id":305,"date":"2014-04-05T10:03:09","date_gmt":"2014-04-05T10:03:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.chimneyrabbit.com\/?p=305"},"modified":"2014-04-05T10:03:09","modified_gmt":"2014-04-05T10:03:09","slug":"a-first-draft-at-last","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.johnkfulton.com\/?p=305","title":{"rendered":"A first draft, at last"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.pictishstones.org.uk\/pictishstones\/pictishstoneshome\/aboutthepicts\/society\/symbols\/symbolsdetail.htm\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-306 aligncenter\" alt=\"Pictish symbols - originals from pictishstones.org.uk\" src=\"http:\/\/www.chimneyrabbit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/Stone-symbols-147x300.jpg\" width=\"147\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.johnkfulton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/Stone-symbols-147x300.jpg 147w, http:\/\/www.johnkfulton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/Stone-symbols.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 147px) 100vw, 147px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>A couple of days ago, I completed the first draft of my latest book, <em>The Dragon on the Tower<\/em>. It&#8217;s been a long process &#8211; I started the book on the 19th of October last year, so it&#8217;s taken me about five and a half months, which is quite a long time for a short 32,500-word book &#8211; and a lot has happened in those five months.<\/p>\n<p>For a start, I finished the book in a different home to the one in which I started it. Moving after nearly 20 years in the same place, with all its accumulation of mountains of stuff, has been extremely hard work, work that hasn&#8217;t finished yet, and has left little time for writing. The reason we were able to put down a deposit on this flat was that my Dad left me some money &#8211; he passed away at the end of October, and that wasn&#8217;t easy to deal with either. I was only a few thousand words into the book when I got the phone call from my Mum that both came as a complete surprise and at the same time I&#8217;d been expecting for years, and I don&#8217;t think I managed to sit myself down at my laptop and open the manuscript for nearly a month after that.<\/p>\n<p>But I did eventually carry on, even incorporating a fairy story about a magic tree that my Dad wrote about 40 years ago, and now the first draft is complete. It&#8217;s a story of ancient Scotland, set on the Tarbat Ness peninsula at the end of the eighth century AD. I based a lot of the historical detail on the archaeological dig carried out by Martin Carver and documented in his (excellent and readable) book <em>Portmahomack: Monastery of the Picts<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.co.uk\/gp\/product\/0748624422\/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1634&amp;creative=6738&amp;creativeASIN=0748624422&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=lesifi-21\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-307\" alt=\"Portmahomack: Monastery of the Picts\" src=\"http:\/\/www.chimneyrabbit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/portmahomack-200x300.jpg\" width=\"200\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.johnkfulton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/portmahomack-200x300.jpg 200w, http:\/\/www.johnkfulton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/portmahomack.jpg 334w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>We used to live at Tarbat Ness, where my dad was a lightkeeper at Tarbat Ness Lighthouse. Writing the book brought back a lot of memories of the place, and made me want to go back and visit it sometime.<\/p>\n<p>I don&#8217;t remember any dragons being there, but maybe I just wasn&#8217;t looking hard enough.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A couple of days ago, I completed the first draft of my latest book, The Dragon on the Tower. It&#8217;s been a long process &#8211; I started the book on the 19th of October last year, so it&#8217;s taken me about five and a half months, which is quite a long time for a short&#8230; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"http:\/\/www.johnkfulton.com\/?p=305\">Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p37h7H-4V","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.johnkfulton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/305"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.johnkfulton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.johnkfulton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.johnkfulton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.johnkfulton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=305"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.johnkfulton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/305\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":309,"href":"http:\/\/www.johnkfulton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/305\/revisions\/309"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.johnkfulton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=305"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.johnkfulton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=305"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.johnkfulton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=305"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}