Total pages in book: 109
Estimated words: 103620 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 518(@200wpm)___ 414(@250wpm)___ 345(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 103620 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 518(@200wpm)___ 414(@250wpm)___ 345(@300wpm)
“Well, thanks again for the party. Cracking good time.” He starts to go, but before he walks off, he looks back at me one last time and says, “Y’know, I just realized something.”
“What’s that?”
“I’ve known you a long time, bro. But I don’t think I’ve ever actually seen you smile before.”
I didn’t even realize I was, but I guess I must be because I can feel the muscles in my cheeks being stretched and my one good eye narrowing. And while that’s definitely surprising to me, there’s another thing about it that I find even more surprising…
I don’t try to hide it.
It’s been over four years since I wrote an EOBS for this series. And, in that time, many, many things about my life have changed.
The plan was, initially, to launch right into this, the third book, but then events began transpiring that upended that plan.
A couple of months after I put the final touches on the second book in the trilogy, The Square, my mother died.
That was its own kind of complicated process and, it just so happened, that at almost exactly the same time, I found out that a TV series I had been trying to sell was going to be bought and I would need to write that script as soon as possible.
So... I had to put this book aside and work on that. Figuring that once I finished, I’d be able to return to writing The Circle.
But then...
Later in that same year, 2019, I found out that a movie I had written and been working on for a long time to try and get brought to the screen was going to be produced and go into production in early 2020.
So, once again, I put this book aside so that I could go work on my film.
But it didn’t happen.
Because in early 2020, the world shut down.
Always one to see the potential to turn lemons into lemonade, I thought, “Well, at least I have the third book in The Shape of Love trilogy to work on...”
And so I started, once again, to work on this book.
And then, miraculously, the studio that produced my film figured out a way for us to get it made anyway in the middle of the pandemic.
So, I headed off to London and spent just about a year going through the process of physical and post-production.
All along, mind you, I kept thinking... “I’ll make time to finish the trilogy. I just have to carve it out.”
By this time it was the end of 2021 and I figured that, at the latest, I’d be able to have a completed manuscript by the summer of 2022.
But, as I dug back into writing it in earnest, I came to discover that my grasp on this world and these characters had altered. I always had a very clear idea of where the story was eventually headed — and Julie and I had discussed those bullet points several times — but suddenly I found myself out of touch with how they would reach their conclusion.
And so, I went back and I read the first two books again. For the first time since almost three years before.
And I was surprised.
Deeply surprised by how much I had misremembered or gotten muddled about or simply forgotten.
And that started me thinking about the concept of time and how manufactured it is. How the way we keep it is entirely a construct by our feeble minds to try and assign something calculable and terminal to that which is immeasurable and infinite.
Because that it what a circle is. A thing with no beginning and no end. An object of continuum. That which has no coarseness and inside of which we all collectively find ourselves whether we are conscious of it or not.
And I let the notion of that swirl around for a while, as only a circle can.
And then I started writing.
And then I stopped again.
And then I started.
And then I stopped.
And then I threw out what I had written.
And then I started again.
And I continued this way of orbital creativity until, finally, one day ... I reached something that may be considered a conclusion.
But, of course, it isn’t. Because nothing ever ends. Not really.
Time and the manipulation of it are one of the themes that run through the entire of this trilogy. Memory in the first book. Concurrence in the second. And resolution and future in this. And for all the things that were planned and deliberated over in this story, that’s one of the things that wasn’t. There was no prescriptive notion about making those ideas a showpiece. They just emerged organically out of the continuum of movement that propelled Alec, Christine, and Danny along.
If you’ve read all three books, you may notice that no actual physical place is mentioned in the first book, The Triangle. And that is because, partially, Alec, Christine, and Danny operate in their own universe which operates by its own set of rules. And while they are still subject to the greater forces that govern the physical world, they cling to one another and transcend them.