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I have been sitting in my own version of the batcave (my office) for the last two weeks beating my fingers against the keyboard and my head against the monitor as I followed Batman through the subterranean bowls of Gotham in our modern day and his father’s own dark journeys through the Gotham of 1958. Then last Friday evening about 9:30 local time, I called Laura down to my office, had her sit in my office chair and type the words ‘The End’ on the manuscript. It was the final ritual end to the journey of this book — at least until I get editorial notes back.

Interestingly, I awoke at 2am the next morning, my mind in a fever of activity regarding the book that I had just finished. I had to tell myself that the book was complete and that I should just lie back down and go to sleep.

It was difficult to do because I’ve been living so deeply in Gotham for so long now. I’ve tried to see the world through the eyes of Bruce Wayne and that perspective, I can tell you from experience, is a very strange one. More than that, there was a tight-rope to be walked on this journey unlike any I have had to walk before.

Usually the characters in my novels spring from my own mind and experience. They are shaped by the story that is being told and the world from which they come. This is a process which is familiar to me — albeit not always comfortable.

But with Batman, I had been entrusted with an ICON. Here was a character whose story people all around the globe seem to know. I have to say SEEM to know because his own history over the last fifty years has changed so many times that establishing any consistent background requires considerable mental gymnastics.

More than that, came the problem of writing something that ‘was the same … except different.’ What is a ‘batman’ novel? Well, it has to have the Caped Crusader in it, of course, and all the familiar trappings of ‘batmobiles’, ‘utility belts’, batcaves, stately Wayne Manor, supervillains, Alfred and Commissioner Gordon. But if it ONLY contains those familiar things and says nothing new or interestingly different about Bruce Wayne and the world of Gotham City then it isn’t particularly interesting. No one wants to read what they already know. On the other hand, if the world of Batman is so drastically altered that it breaks the ‘trust’ with the audience to provide them with a story about the Batman they know — then no one wants to read THAT either.

So for the last few months I’ve been walking a tight rope trying to find the delicate balance between homage and derivative. It’s the difference between shedding new light on the legend and ruining it.

So in the course of my journey I’ve met a pantheon of characters and had to give voice to each of them. They ranged from the obscure to the infamous — Commissioner Gordon, Lewis Moxon, his father Julius and his daughter Mallory, Query, Echo, Fay Moffit and Scarface, Harley Quinn, Alfred, Joker, Thomas Wayne, Martha Kane, Denholm Sinclair and Celia Kazansakis. All of them from the past and the present woven into a seamless story of fate, destiny and choice.

My hope is that I’ve achieve ‘homage’ — especially to all those great talents down the last fifty years that have contributed each in their way to the vision of a man driven to use any means to achieve justice for those who cannot find it for themselves.

Take a look for yourself in the sample chapters I’ve just posted for our Tracy Hickman newsletter subscribers … and let me know in our forums how you think I’ve done.

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