Fiction
The Later Light
A contemporary novel about discovering Brugge and choosing a second act.
About the Book
David Specter has spent his working life helping other people move. Then a visit to Brugge gives him a reason to reconsider where—and how—he wants to live. Beneath the Belfort, along the Dijver, and through the gardens and quiet streets beyond the great squares, a first visit becomes a lasting attachment. Across years of return journeys, friendship, family, and a growing love for Brugge, the city opens a place for writing and a future he is no longer willing to leave indefinitely for later. But making room for that future means real decisions about work, income, and the people who count on him. Warm, observant, and threaded with humor, The Later Light brings the grandeur of Brugge into a story of purposeful change—and the pleasure of finding somewhere worth returning to.
STORY COMPLETE · PUBLICATION NOVEMBER 1, 2027
Ask about this bookA Taste of the Writing
Read an Excerpt
A selected passage from the book.
At the Rozenhoedkaai, he forgot about photographs altogether for perhaps ten seconds.
Then he wanted one badly enough that he took several, none of which retained what he could see when he lowered the phone.
The canal bent between buildings and reflections. Roofs and towers came together in a view he recognized from an image he had looked at in Arizona, except that now there were sounds behind him and cold through his gloves and a smell of food coming from somewhere he couldn’t see.
People were taking turns at the railing without formally agreeing to. He waited, stood where someone else had stood, and found that being in the position didn’t give him the photograph he wanted.
He put the phone away.
A couple asked whether he’d take theirs. He did, waited while they inspected it, and took another when the woman said she had closed her eyes.
“Would you like one?” the man asked.
David almost declined. He generally returned from places with pictures that proved only that someone had been there, not necessarily him.
He handed over the phone.
The resulting image showed him in his new coat, standing a little stiffly in front of water and buildings, smiling as though somebody had just asked him what he sold.
“Thank you.”
They moved away. He looked at the photograph again.
It wasn’t a bad picture. It simply didn’t show that he had reached this spot by walking into one surprise after another, close enough together to make him keep saying, quietly and to nobody, that there was more.
He sent it to Barbara anyway.
Then he typed: You need to see this.
He looked at the sentence before sending it. It sounded impatient, as though she had been delaying deliberately.
He sent it unchanged.
Meet the Author
John K. Milius
John K. Milius brings four decades of sales, leadership, customer relationships, and hard-earned commercial judgment to the page. His fiction turns that same eye toward Brugge—a city of water, memory, history, and stories waiting beneath the stones.
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