Visiting historic sites
Spring 2023
By Rehan Khan
The year started as the previous one ended with a flurry of requests from schools for author visits. It’s really good to see school visits back on the agenda for writers. I know we all missed this during the past few years. It’s particularly heartening to see more faith-based schools reaching out to organize events.
I’m now in the depths of completing the first draft of the new novel, the one set in 90 BC. I think it’ll be around one-hundred-thousand words and I’m close to that total. Once I’m done with the first draft, I’ll take a month away from the story, during which time I’m planning the next series of novels to start writing after completing this one. That way, I can shift my attention to something completely new and then come back with a fresh mind to my first draft. Putting distance between the work is a really useful practice I find that allows me to start the second draft with the energy and zest it deserves. After going into the lengthy process of second/ third/ fourth draft, I’ll then send the book to my editor and then wait once more for another 4-6 weeks, during which time I will be doing further planning on the next series of books.
As part and parcel of the research process for the upcoming historic fiction I spent some really valuable time in March in Jordan, visiting some of the historic sites where chapters play out in my novel. To give you a sneak peak of some of these, they are places like Petra, Bozra and Sella. Being on site really helped visualize some of the battle scenes described in the book, understanding how they would work and also getting to drips with the contour of the land. I’d already written the chapters, but the site visits helped apply the finishing touches to the overall narrative. We also travelled to the incredible Wadi Rum, where there are the last vestiges of the old Ottoman Hejaz Railway, as well as it being the site for filming movies such as The Martian and some of the Star Wars series.
I’m really thankful to my good friend Neil King, an excellent journalist and writer, for introducing me to Legends of the Condor Heroes by Jin Yong. The novels have been described as a sort of Chinese Lord of the Rings and I am completely enraptured with the story telling and characters. I’ve read through the first three books in the series and have one left. Other books I have been reading these past few months are: Persuasion by Jane Austin, which is a beautiful tale of how the art of persuasion did not work in one young woman’s case but came good in the end. The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky, which is a brilliant tale about forgiveness and letting things go rather than being burned out by them. The World According to Colour by James Fox, which is a wonderful book about how colour is seen through the ages and across cultures.
That’s all for now, peace and blessings be upon you.
