It occurs to me that writing a novel is not easy. I started writing my first “novel” when I was 15. I had seen on TV the sexploits of Alvin Purple, and was also heavily influenced by the Carry On movies. As a young, virile, milkman’s trolley boy – read fit, sweaty, adrenaline and testosterone pumping teenager delivering milk to bored housewives and frustrated spinsters – I figured my own situation was rife with possibilities for adventures rivalling Alvin Purple’s.

I set pen to paper, and came up with a pretty good opening paragraph. It was a slightly farcical misunderstanding between myself – George the trolley boy – and a rather gruff, weightlifting bouncer called Fabian who had come to the curb to get his milk. George expected he would bite the top of the milk bottle off – not the lid, the top - and guzzle it right there.

‘Homo?’ I asked him.
‘What did you call me?’ demanded the Greek man mountain.

And so begins the novel. George was simply asking if he wanted homogenised milk – “homo” in milkman-speak, or skim. Fabian, of course, thought something else. A BennyHillesque chase ensued with Fabian hot on George's heels, Shirley, Fabian's sweet but oppressed mistress on his heels. Charlie, George’s buck-toothed Indian employer, who had arrived in the truck just in time to see George abandon the stock on the street in favour of running for his life, joined the chase.

Luckily, Miss Jarvis, at Number 67 – you guessed it, a tall, leggy, cleavaged blonde in a sheer robe and with the sweetest disposition – managed to calm the situation, assuage Fabian’s homophobic rage, smile big enough to hypnotise Charlie – milk trolley? What milk trolley? - into submission, and rescue the hapless teen from the mob.

She was even sweet enough to invite George over later for “tea and cake.”

In the 70’s it might have worked, but I didn’t get much past “tea and cake.” While it was possibly a good intro chapter, carrying the theme through for another hundred or so pages proved to be more of a task than I had anticipated.

So I gave up.

But the dream of writing a novel never went away. It merely took a twenty year hiatus, and was rekindled by an obsession with the American Civil War. The battle of Shiloh, in April 1862, was the new theatre upon which my inner novelist would find himself. Look for that on bookshelves some time in 2016 (if I’m lucky).

Recent events at Waihopai might have seen one of my later characters at the centre of a media storm, if he were real. Mild mannered GCSB analyst slash ruthless undercover CIA operative Jackson Kennet wouldn’t have been so nice to the vandals. He would simply have arranged an “accident” for each of them. But protagonist – mercenary Mike Baker - may have intervened on their behalf. Who knows? That book should be published about August. 2025.

Celia is my latest obsession. Another ruthless character. The antithesis of saccharine sweet Civil War nurse Miriam Cormany Holt? Possibly.

Celia will hopefully hit the bookshelves sooner than the others. At least, that’s what my writer’s group promises.

Anyway, it frequently occurs to me that writing a novel is not easy. Unless you are Marian Keyes. Referring to writing her latest novel, one reviewer reminds us that “it may look easy, but there's real skill in creating chapters and scenes which, like shattered mirrors, reflect back various perspectives and shards of life.”

Hopefully I’ve matured beyond the Alvin Purple wannabe milk trolley boy to the point I might actually get a novel of worth on the shelves.