Things: The Cavalier Spy

"1776: His army clinging to New York by a thread, a desperate General George Washington sends Lieutenant Jeremiah Creed behind British lines again. But even the audacity of Creed and his band of spies cannot stop the British juggernaut from driving the Americans from New York and chasing them across New Jersey in a blitzkrieg fashion. Realizing the imminent loss of one of the new nation's most important states to the enemy, Washington sends Creed into the war-torn Hackensack Valley. His mission: recruit and train a gang of rogues to work behind British lines."

As you can tell from the lead-in above, my second novel, The Cavalier Spy, is now out. I posted an entire page on The Cavalier Spy on this blog, but a post on it would be appropriate just a few weeks after its release. Those following me on Twitter (@SWOConnell) or on Facebook (S.W. O'Connell) have been bombarded with promos, nuggets, and tidbits. You may thank me later for all that. This work was much more challenging to produce than my first novel, The Patriot Spy. Going into it, it would be easier. But I was wrong.

Writing The Patriot Spy was my first venture, so I had no idea what I was getting myself into. I had no timeline and only a vague idea of where it would go when I started. The Cavalier Spy, as a sequel, was more challenging. For one thing, I had to remember everything I wrote in the first book to ensure I did not repeat anything unintentionally. Second, I intentionally had to repeat enough scenes from the first book. Why is that, you ask? Because I wanted The Cavalier Spy to be a "stand-alone" work. That way, readers who had not read The Patriot Spy would be up on things. And, of course, I had to do that without giving away any nuggets from the first book. Ice cream headache time!

The other challenge was how to follow the largest battle of the war and all the excitement and intrigue that went with it. How do you make it more enjoyable? As it turns out, that became easier as I went along and got into the plot's rhythm. Things started to happen. I read several new works related to the period following the loss of New York, and before long, I had several interesting things to build the action around. And a new piece of the Revolutionary War struggles to be revealed. And to juice things up, I have a multi-chapter flashback providing more insight into the main protagonist, Lieutenant Jeremiah Creed. As I paced through it, new ideas and characters developed. A fictional town. A British plot. Political intrigue on both sides.

About halfway through the story, I knew where I would end it, with an iconic scene from America's history. But you'll have to read the book to learn more about that.

Shameless plug:  The Cavalier Spy is available on Amazon at:

https://www.amazon.com/Cavalier-Spy-S-W-OConnell/dp/1737663651