August 2026. On the Ropes and Clearing the Basement
August was a strange month. A few decent shots landed, but I am still standing. That feels like the right way to describe it.
Rocky talks about having things in the basement that need clearing out, and writing has always done that for me. It gives me somewhere to put ideas, memories, frustrations and bits of life that otherwise sit there gathering dust.
This month felt like a combination of both things: getting knocked onto the ropes occasionally, then going back downstairs and clearing another box from the basement. Hand in glove, if you will. Pun absolutely intended.
I write because I enjoy writing. I like creating something that did not exist before. I like starting with an idea, testing it, changing it, occasionally breaking it completely, then trying to put it back together in a better shape.
Building Henry Knox has been exactly that. He started as a character in one book. Now I have his past, his future, his family, his career and a timeline stretching across decades. Every book seems to reveal another part of him. And I am still learning how to write him.
Taking a few punches
That brings me neatly onto reviews. I had a couple this year that were less than complimentary. One reviewer described one of my books as being written like a five-year-old, complained about the discussion of growing up working class, skipped sections about a cuddly toy, and even questioned the quality of RMP recruits if I was representative of them.
That is quite an efficient kicking for a single Amazon review.
Another said the storyline was interesting but criticised the grammar and sentence construction and felt that the book had not been proofread properly.
I would love to claim that reviews do not bother me, but they do.
You spend months writing something, read it until you are sick of looking at it, edit it, change it, publish it, and then willingly invite strangers to tell you whether it is any good.
Sometimes they love it. Sometimes they really, really do not. That is part of publishing.
And there is a useful lesson in criticism, even when you disagree with the delivery.
I suspect some of the grammar criticism came from the way I originally presented military terminology in Protegimus. I would sometimes follow an action or decision with a bold military phrase or expression. It made perfect sense to me because it was language I had lived with for years.
That does not necessarily mean it made sense to everyone else. I subsequently removed those sections.
I am slightly sad about that because they added some military flavour, but accessibility matters. If a reader stops because they think a sentence is broken rather than recognising it as terminology, then whatever I intended has not worked. That is part of getting better. I still reserve the right to disagree with being compared to a five-year-old, though.
Lance Jack
The biggest writing achievement this month was finishing the final draft of Lance Jack. I am proud of this one.
It is probably the closest I have come to writing the RMP as I remember it rather than the version people expect from television.
Knox is young in this book.
He is proud. Vain sometimes. Inexperienced. Occasionally stupid. He makes decisions without fully understanding the consequences because he has not accumulated enough scars yet to know what certain choices cost.
That was important to me.
I have had feedback that the book does not contain enough action. I understand that criticism, but I think that is partly the point. Working a shift in a Provost Company was not twelve hours of car chases, fights and doors being kicked in.
Sometimes something exploded into life and everything happened at once. Other times nothing happened.
Investigations involved statements, enquiries, exhibits, notebooks, waiting, interviews and talking to people who either did not want to speak to you or desperately needed someone to listen. There is tension in sitting opposite a suspect and trying to get an answer when both of you understand what that answer might mean.
There is tension in speaking to a victim who is deciding whether they can trust you enough to tell you what happened.
I wanted that reality. Not Jack Reacher wearing a red beret.
Not a television version of the Army where uniforms are wrong, soldiers wander around without the kit they should be wearing, or military behaviour changes because it looks better on camera.
The little things matter. If you get the little things right, the big moments have more weight. That is what I have tried to do with Lance Jack.
As I keep hearing, "In an Investigation, details matter."
The book will be out on October 1st
The next one
Naturally, having finished one book, I immediately started another.
Apparently I have learned nothing.
The working title is The Others, and it follows directly from the end of Lance Jack. The first few chapters have been difficult to write, but for different reasons. The subject matter sits close to experiences and emotions I understand personally. There are parts of the story where I have had to stop, think about what I am actually trying to say, then go back into it.
That is where the Rocky basement comes back in.
Knox is not me and his story is not mine, but fiction gives you a safe distance from things you recognise. You can take an emotion, hand it to somebody else and watch what they do with it. Sometimes that tells you something about yourself as well. That is probably one of the reasons I keep writing.
The Memorial Garden
The Turf Moor Memorial Garden continues to take up plenty of time as well. It has been part of my life for years now, and there is always something that needs doing. Cleaning, weeding, painting, sales, improvements, maintenance or planning whatever comes next.
There have been frustrations around it recently, and there are always different opinions about ownership, contribution and direction when something has been running for a long time.
I try to keep one thing in mind.
The garden is not about me.
It never was.
It exists for the people whose names and memories are represented there. So I will keep doing what needs doing and let the garden speak for itself. That feels more productive than arguing about credit.
Burnley doing Burnley things
Football has done its best to provide some additional character building. Burnley currently sit twenty-Fourth out of twenty-four after Saturday's defeat. I thought it couldn't get much worse after last season, I was wrong.
The club also managed to sell our leading striker on deadline day for what appeared to be less than his market value, which certainly added another interesting decision to the collection. Supporting Burnley teaches patience.
It also teaches you never to become too emotionally attached to a league table in August. At least that is what I am telling myself.
Blue
The biggest positive of the month arrived with four legs. Courtney brought home Blue, a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel named after the raptor from Jurassic World.
He is already a lovable little rogue.
The house had felt very different since losing Bella, and Blue has brought a bit of chaos back into it. He is not a replacement for her. Nothing could be. I still occasionally call him Bella without thinking, which catches me every time.
But he has his own personality already and has rapidly worked out how to get exactly what he wants. Mostly by looking at us. It appears to be an effective system.
What next?
I said at the beginning that this might be my last monthly blog for a while. I am not sure that means stopping. It probably just means removing the obligation to produce one because another page has turned on the calendar.
I would rather write a blog when I have something worth saying. The books will continue regardless.
Lance Jack is finished. The Others is underway.
There are more Knox stories mapped out than I realistically have time to write, which is probably a good problem to have. There will be more experiments as well.
Some will work. Some will end up shelved. Somebody will probably give another one of them one star. That is fine.
If you put yourself in the ring, eventually somebody is going to hit you. The important bit is deciding whether you still want to fight.
I do.
August had me on the ropes a couple of times. The bell went. I went back to the corner and I'm coming out for the next round.
Exemplo Ducemus.