The Bumpy Road to Dark Partition
Thirteen years, twelve edits, one book.
Almost 2 a.m.
My tiny studio is the only source of light in the village at this time of night. A cup of coffee on my desk, still warm, but I haven’t even tried it yet—my cat has wrapped himself around the cup, sleeping. If I wake him, I’ll burn in hell. So I have to be content with inhaling the aroma instead. But that’s ok. I’m used to it.
The second proof copy of Dark Partition, all carved up with my handwritten notes, lies on the desk in front of me. I’m squinting at it, carving more notes into its pages, and hunting for just one more flaw while making final changes in Scrivener. An extra pair of hands would come in handy. No pun intended.
Will it ever end?
Well… it has to.
The finish line for this book is just around the corner. I can feel it.
This whole thing began in 2012. I sat down one evening and started writing. No, I didn’t produce 2,000, or even 500, words a day. I just kept going until more than half the book was drafted. Then life got too hectic, churning out a hundred challenges per second. Priorities shifted. But I still kept at it. Oh, and by the way, did I mention I was writing it in two languages?
Over a year had passed before disaster struck. And it struck hard.
Really hard.
Right in the solar plexus.
It was summer 2015.
The first draft was nearly done, in two languages, saved on both my laptop and external drive. To this day, it remains a mystery how all my files—twenty-five years of photographs and ninety percent of the book—vanished from both.
I spent a small fortune trying to recover the data. All in vain. No, I didn’t shoot myself—though that’s exactly how it felt. Instead, I got plastered like never before, draining a full glass of whisky. I decided to forget about those lost twenty-five years of digitally stored memories, and about Dark Partition.
Which I did.
Well… I pretended to.
Until 2019.
Then I decided to return to the novel. You see, I hate leaving things unfinished. I gathered whatever shards of Dark Partition remained and started rebuilding the first draft. This time only in English. Another year or so slipped by. Life took a turn, then went a bit sideways. Then COVID hit, which didn’t help. I had to prioritise other things again, at the cost of Dark Partition. But somehow, I kept pushing. The draft moved forward. It went through a serious edit—lost a few thousand words, corrected hundreds of mistakes, polished the story. The first draft became the second, then the third… and eventually the seventh.
But that’s as far as a slightly dyslexic me could go.
I needed an editor.
And money to pay one.
Turned out, getting the money was much easier than finding the editor.
I could’ve hired someone in the US—no problem. But for this novel, I needed someone here, in Ireland. Word of mouth didn’t help at all. Some even warned me not to trust local editors. By 2024, I had almost lost all hope, and was just an inch from topping up an American editor’s bank account—when my cat found an editor for me.
Yes—my cat. But that’s a story of its own, and for another time.
The editor lived just a few minutes from me, in the same village, out in the sticks—turns out cats really can work miracles. Though she was busy with other projects, she agreed to work on my book.
That was May 2024.
A few months later, when she was almost done, I decided to test her patience and make her life harder. I changed about 20% of the book and cut nearly a fifth of the words. At this stage the novel lost over 22,000 of them. The editor had to comb through the manuscript all over again.
In total, it took 12 drafts and over 10 months of editing.
After she handed me the final version, the manuscript entered the after-final polishing phase. Then I designed the cover, compiled the book in Scrivener, and ordered a proof copy. Ten days later, a courier handed me a small package. It was an incredible feeling to hold the childhood dream in my hands—no words could describe it!
Can You Spot The Cat?
But still, there was room for improvement: rewriting, cutting scenes, killing 3,500 more words, polishing dialogue, and so on. I also created four charcoal illustrations. Two weeks later, the second proof copy arrived.
Cup of cold coffee on my desk. Diana Krall and Chet Baker in the background, though not at the same time. One cat on my lap, the other on my keyboard, both asleep, both purring. How am I supposed to type without waking them up, and ending up in hell?
It’ll probably take one or two more proof copies before my dream is ready to meet the world. But… But I’ve finally come around the corner, and now I can see the finish line. And it feels so damn good, especially after jumping through so many hoops for so many years.
It was a bumpy road to Dark Partition—an unforgettable journey, clad in dedication and sacrifice.
I do love this book.
I hope you will too—if you decide to dive in.
