My task for the next month is to edit another draft of book three of my Sun Song Trilogy.
But I also plan to read and take notes from the first two books. I have this cold dread that hits me in the middle of the night – what if the trilogy ends and there is some glaring hole in the plot? I know editors will perform magic, but I feel personally responsible to polish off the trilogy without any errors and with a strong story the readers will be satisfied with.
I have been writing the Sun Song Trilogy since 2012, something I didn’t expect when I began the story. This was meant to be a stand alone book set in 2089. But when I began to build the world in which to set the story, I realised that the world, the characters, the story and the themes were too big for one book.
All my other projects have been put on hold until this Sun Song is complete. I admit I am looking forward to working on another story but I’ve loved every minute of this journey into the future and I will miss Sorlie, Ishbel, Scud,Dawdle and all the other characters who have inhabited my days for the past six years. I want to do them justice and let them live on in readers’ imaginations and on library and book store shelves for many years to come.
Moira McPartlin’s debut novel The Incomers, published by Fledgling Press in 2012, was shortlisted for the Saltire Society First Book of the Year Award. Over the next seven years Moira wrote her speculative fiction, Sun Song Trilogy novels (also published by Fledgling Press). The novels, set in 2089, reflect many issues we face today. Moira’s last novel, Before Now: Memoir of a Toerag, is written entirely in the Fife dialect and was published by her own imprint, Trilleachan Press, in May 2021.
In 2021 she became a writing fellow at Hawthornden Castle. In 2022 she was appointed the Scriever for The Federation of Writers (Scotland), and in 2024 was the recipient of a Bridges Award, a residency at Cove Park, Argyll. Her short stories and poetry have been widely published in literary magazines and anthologies.
Moira’s latest publication, A Thing So Delicate: The Hidden Voices of Scotland’s Mass Concrete Viaducts, is a collaboration with her husband, Colin. It is a hybrid about the social history surrounding the building of Scotland’s Victorian mass concrete viaducts. This includes creative nonfiction, prose, poetry, and photography.
Moira is listed on the Scottish Book Trust Live Literature Database.
View all posts by Moira Mcpartlin
www.moiramcpartlin.com 