I wrote the first part of this quest around seven years ago, in Steam Highwayman: Smog & Ambuscade. Did I then dream how long it would take me to write the conclusion? Far from it! The original plan was to write a book every six months and complete the series in three years…
I maintain that I could keep to that speed if I didn’t have to earn a living in other ways. Over those seven years, there have been periods of full-time teaching, part-time teaching and supply work at three different schools. Most recently, I’ve been working part-time for my church, as well as providing personal tutoring for 11+ and GCSE students locally. I was actually doing that in 2017 as well!
And what a lot of other water has flowed under the bridge of my life. In 2017 I was recently-married, but childless. Now my wife and I have a full house of noisy, needy youngsters aged 1, 3 and 5.
Yet I still dream of hidden treasure… There are a few people to blame for that: Robert Louis Stevenson, clearly, but also Enid Blyton, who wasn’t above stashing a box of jewels, coins or contraband in the occasional cave, ruin, castle, boat cabinet, hollow tree etc. This weekend my daughter began reading The Castle of Adventure and, besides the paternal pride of seeing my own child keen and able to read ‘chapter books’, I smelled the wind of a whole new mode of life… She is now old enough for book recommendations – and that means, for the shaping of her mind through stories she can read for herself.
I’m off to the bookshop.
