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I’ve been asked when my next novel is coming out, in hardcover and paperback. Some while yet, I’m afraid. My fourth should have been completed by May 2009 and due for publication later this year. Unfortunately, during my annual medical for my racing licence just over a year ago, my doctor noticed my PSA (Prostate Specific Antigen) reading was high. Soon it was confirmed that I had prostate cancer, although I had shown no symptoms and have never been seriously ill in seventy years. After a number of examinations and reviews I was faced with the choice: radio therapy or the opportunity (!) to become the twelfth person in Britain to undergo keyhole surgery for the removal of the prostate gland. I chose the last, was operated on successfully in May 2008, was knocked back more than somewhat for a number of months but by October I was, no, not getting down to writing but racing again at Mallory Park. Actually I planned to resume my fiction work over the winter but then my 99-year-old father, living independently, took a tumble and had to be moved into a care home and his house cleared and sold. Not a good time for the Barnards.
However, I have managed to complete research for the new novel and plan to start writing this October, with a view to submitting the completed MS to Headline Review in May 2010. It is possible the hardcover will appear by the end of the year, though more likely that both it and the mass-market paperback will be published in 2011. My apologies to those readers who have asked when they should start checking the shelves of bookshops, but occasionally real life intrudes, particularly when you are 71…
A closing comment about prostate cancer. Based on the number of people who have suffered from it, or know those who have, this is astonishingly common. It needs to be caught early, and this involves not only checking yourself for symptoms and monitoring your PSA level but if something is detected undergoing what, in normal circumstances, might be considered embarrassing examinations. I found it went beyond embarrassment because you were, after all, facing a life-threatening condition. So, to men of a certain age, let’s say beyond fifty, don’t assume that you are impervious to diseases that you always assume strike someone else but never you; somewhat like the attitude of those fighter pilots I write about who believe it will always happen to the other chap.
My consultant, at one stage, said: ‘ People don’t die of prostate cancer, they die with it.’ In other words, the cancer spreads if it’s allowed to flourish undetected. So please, if you’re like me, suppress your natural masculine dislike of admitting to frailty or weakness, and visit your GP if in any doubt. I was lucky because my racing medical took me there for another reason. Otherwise, the situation might have been very different.
And my regime now? I’m about to have the last of my three-monthly blood tests to check my PSA level, these spread over a year. They’ve been effectively zero so far and if this one is the same, then I move to a six-monthly check. So life, that splendid word, is very close to normal again and my outline synopsis for Book Four is complete and, I believe, an exciting and broad-ranging story covering combat flying in both World Wars. I just hope that, after all this time, it proves to be worth waiting for…