Getting an early start on No. 25

Playwright George Bernard Shaw advised that you should not "wait for perfect conditions" to begin an undertaking. You should instead "start where you are with what you have." So today, I did just that.

I started my twenty-fifth novel with the limited resources I have compiled over the past few weeks. I jumped headfirst into my next project.

The Winding Road, the second installment in the Stone Shed trilogy, will continue the story of Noah and Jake Maclean, orphaned brothers from 2024 who experience the American Revolution through the magic of time travel. It will pick up where The Patriots left off.

In the first book, the brothers, ages 23 and 16, committed to the lovely daughters of a furniture maker, a patriot family, and life in the 1770s. In the second book, they will build on these commitments. They will use their wits, knowledge, and resources to better several lives and improve America's fortunes in the midst of its war for independence.

Set in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, and Connecticut from 1777 to 1779, The Winding Road will focus on Noah's experiences as a soldier in the Continental Army and his developing relationship with fiancée Abigail Ward. Jake and Rachel Ward, Abby's younger sister, will assume important secondary roles and again test the limits of a stone shed that can send people through time. Douglas and Donna Maclean will continue to follow Noah's and Jake's travels and confront new challenges as they attempt to explain their grandnephews' disappearance to police, reporters, and family members in 2024.

Other characters will also get some play, including a dashing American officer who befriends Noah, a villainous British tracker, and George Washington. The beleaguered patriot general, surrounded by rivals, will quickly warm to a mysterious new soldier who can predict coming events and provide his struggling army with needed supplies.

Readers who wanted more history in the first book will get it in the second. They will have the opportunity to follow Noah from the bitter winter at Valley Forge to the critical Battle of Monmouth to the developing spy wars in and around New York City. They will see the American Revolution in its deceptively quiet middle years.

At a projected one hundred chapters, The Winding Road will be slightly smaller than The Patriots. I expect to complete the first draft sometime early next year and publish the novel itself in the spring.

Image credit: "Washington and Lafayette at Valley Forge," a 1907 oil painting by John Ward Dunsmore, is a public-domain image offered through Wikimedia Commons.