An Author’s Update (Instead of the Story)
About "Artem’s Trouble", my first novel, and other things
Dear Readers,
This week’s instalment of Artem’s Trouble will be delayed – this week I unexpectedly had to do some urgent finishing work with the translation of two books into Polish that I’d been working on recently, and it completely derailed my intent to develop what would be going next with Hugo and poor Artem, who got himself in some serious trouble!
Moreover, it turns out the current reality related to the war in Ukraine and Poland’s involvement in it (and the hybrid war Russia is waging against Poland) is so complicated (even if I live in Warsaw and am more or less up to date with it!) that – being a discovery writer after all! – I need to do some more “discovery”. It’s one thing to know about current events and completely another – to fit it all into the contours of a story you began!
My apologies and I hope to bring the next episode to you asap.
I also started – or rather, re-started – writing my first Hugoverse novel! The Shadows of Bourgogne tells a story of Hugo’s adventures in France, in his elderly friend’s château in Burgundy, where the owner’s father’s ghost makes a sudden appearance and it turns out everything has a connection to WWII and post-war events. Madame Elisabeth (the friend), asks Hugo to untangle it. And one of my favourite characters makes an appearance as well!
Alas, it all felt simple too, and then I started to dig into the stories of aristocracy in France during WWII and now I feel absolutely inundated with facts, ideas, possibilities. Writer’s life is researcher’s life, apparently, at least now.
But a nice change will happen for me tomorrow, as I’m having a movie shoot – as an actor. I’ve been wanting to go back to acting for some time now (did I really leave it?) and a nice small thing is happening tomorrow.
Besides, I’m reading 10 books in the same time when I’m completely incapable of writing anything.
But next week is a fresh week, free from any translation work (which makes writing impossible – one can work only so much with words in a day!), so I hope catch up with everything!
In the meantime, feel free to begin reading Artem’s Trouble, if you haven’t already and I hope to give you something more to read after the weekend!
Yours truly,
Piotr