I’m going to write a new book!

This is a dangerous thing to say in public but I’m going to write a new book. It’s dangerous because I already have a 60% completed novel and a 20% completed non-fiction book on the go.  Sadly due to my extremely busy work-load I can’t see myself having the time to complete either of them in the next few years.

What also makes it dangerous is that I have hardly any time at all.  Not having had a day off all year, a 12 hour day is a rarity, 15 hours is kind of standard and a few 18 hour days a week is not unusual.

However I’m sick of having the urge to write and not having either the time or energy to do so but I thought if I can find a manageable topic to write about then maybe I can see this one through.  How hard can it be?  I wrote Lest We Forget in 28 days and had found a publisher for it within 30.  If I can write a complete guide to WW1 in a month from scratch and mostly off the top of my head then surely I can do it again even if those 28 days are spread out over hundreds of 15-30 minute slots.   I remember writing How To Get Rich Using Airbnb in about 2 hours whilst sipping lemonade on the patio.  Most of my factual books take around 2-3 weeks to write whilst novels take longer.  My Timeless Trilogy took about 8 years!

So what am I going to write about?  Sacred, Secret Gardens, Ruins and Parks in the old Roman City of London. Ever since I created my tour for Ye Olde England Tours what I thought would be a complete non-seller of a tour has been incredibly popular and every single person who has been on it has absolutely loved it.  In this huge city of millions of people, it is possible to find right in the very centre of the storm, a tranquil oasis of Roman streets, Viking lanes, medieval churches and ancient gardens and usually without seeing another tourist, sometimes without seeing another person.

I’ve discovered three or four new such gardens in the last few weeks and though I can never be certain to have found them all, am aware of about 116 or so of them all in the Square Mile, very few of which are larger than a a small backyard but nearly all of them historic, secluded and for all intents and purposes, secret.

When I started off with the idea of creating such a guide, I thought perhaps that there might be 40 or 50 which would be manageable but way over 100 is a bit daunting so lets hope I find time to make this happen.   I don’t want to “Bite off more than I can chew” as the idiom goes.

I’m sure it won’t be an international best seller but if there is one thing I have found in both tours and books is if you find a good niche, a book or tour will always sell quite steadily year after year.  It may not be the next Harry Potter but I’ve had category number 1’s in various non-fiction charts in Britain, the USA and Japan which isn’t bad.  Hopefully the book will open up a different side of London to locals and overseas readers alike and whilst anyone can write a book on a mainstream subject, there can be few people better equipped than I to write a guide to the Sacred, Secret Gardens, Ruins and Parks in the old Roman City of London.  Now, if only I knew where to find a Time-Machine 🙂