Six years ago, about two years after I retired, I thought that I should write a book. This was a bald (and bold) idea as I was in no way sure of the type of book, the subject matter or anything else about it. I just felt like writing one. I had written some poetry in previous years and some short pieces but had never ventured further. This was a project very much larger than any of my earlier efforts.

Several months later, I commenced. It took the form of an autobiographical memoir, stretching from my earliest memories to the present. I worked at this, with many revisions for about a year or so and finally completed it to the best of my ability – but I felt dissatisfied with it. It was mixed in its recollections and style, it came across in parts as a simple recounting of events, the areas of self- and event-analysis were unconvincing and, when two of my family read it, they described it as a “little tedious and uninteresting”, probably echoing my own thoughts on it. I went no further with it, although I did think that it contained some good pieces. However, it was evident that I had to go back to the drawing board.

In late 2008, while spending what was to be the last visit to our house in the south of France, I happened on two blue tickets stashed underneath the bedside lamp in our bedroom. They were two entry tickets to the old walled town of Dubrovnik, in Croatia. My wife and I had visited Dubrovnik in 2005 during an eastern European bus tour from Constantinople, through Bulgaria, The Former Republic of Macedonia, Albania, Monte Negro, Croatia and Austria and had been enchanted with the city of Dubrovnik. While the tickets were definitely not ours, a title such as “Two Tickets to Dubrovnik” appealed to me and some ideas started to swirl around the concept. I finally settled down to put something together.

Eventually, after 18 months work, in 2012, I completed “Two Tickets to Dubrovnik”. I called it a novella and it was centred on an Australian wine writer spending a few weeks in Dubrovnik and becoming emotionally involved with a local girl and enmeshed in the dubious affairs of her family. The interlude did not end well and the protagonist left the city to return home, saddened but probably no wiser for his experiences. The book was originally envisaged as a stand-alone piece but the feedback I received from various readers, enquiring about what would happen to the various characters, led me to consider writing a sequel, and then, rather quickly, the idea of a trilogy sprang up and I opted for this approach. So was born the “Out of Solitude” trilogy.

This proved to be a major exercise, and one that would take me another two years. I had touched on France and the world of wine in “Dubrovnik” but now broadened the attention given to these areas of interest and, just as the Chemins de St Jacques had intrigued me during my various visits to France, so this piece of European history became an integral theme of the next two books. Each of the second and third books was of a similar length to the first, each took just over a year to complete, and each involved a considerable amount of research to collate the material for them. The second book, “A View from the Languedoc”, was published in 2013 and the final in the trilogy. “To the East”, in August 2014. In the end, I was pleased with the overall story and themes running through the books and the internal consistency necessary but quite tricky to maintain. “East” also finished with a final thread left dangling, which may or may not lead further. Nothing is contemplated at this stage – but the option is always there.

So, I have produced three books over six years, although the three could well be regarded as three parts of a single large tome. To describe these years of writing as enjoyable would not be quite fair to the truth. When the ideas came, they then needed fleshing out and that required much research and being engrossed in this was certainly enjoyable, although it was time-consuming and isolating. Nevertheless, I did enjoy this immensely, as further dimensions on different subjects emerged from the research and I was able to incorporate them into the narrative. My typing being rudimentary, it was a challenge to get my ideas down as they came to me and I had many revisions and correcting stages to go through. In the end result, however, I was pleased, and even the seemingly interminable wrestling with the publisher only made me more determined to achieve the result that I wanted.

Now it is done, I sit back and consider whether it was worthwhile and I can only conclude that it was. The quality of the books can only be judged by the readers but I am satisfied with them. I commend them to you while I consider the lilies for a while and ponder the future.