A three-legged workhorse

Inside Ed's Head 2022-11-21

Okay, here’s some new music I’ve got into this week:

Kind of Mogwai, kind of Explosions in the Sky, it’s helping me get on with my writing. What I listen to when I’m working is very important. If it’s some admin, a podcast or audiobook. If it’s creative work, like outlining etc, I’ll put on something I want to get into. If it’s writing and cutting words, I’ll put on something instrumental – post-rock like this, or a film score (or a video game one!) or some modern classical like Olafur Arnalds or some soothing dub techno.

Last Week

I had a week off! Mostly, anyway. My work output was pretty slight, I’ll be honest. I did the final proof of Fenchurch 9 (subject to this week!) and the cover for a book (spoiler: it’s Fenchurch 10. Watch this space). Couple of days of just wandering around and doing nothing much! I highly recommend it, but it was incredibly wet. This week, by contrast, is much colder. Brrrr.

I did the hardback editions for Fenchurch 1-9, which are now live. But I’m unlikely to get the books by the FB launch on the 30th, as they’re coming from Germany. Bollocks! But it was satisfying to sit down and get the book files all done. I think they look awesome.

And I got the edits back for Marshall 2, WHERE OUR THE BODIES LIE. That’s the new title. The definitive title. Lost most of the weekend to tightening up, but it’s a much stronger book for it. The Marshall books are definitely a step up for me in some ways – I’m trying to do something a bit different to the others and I’m very pleased with the first one. I was a bit concerned with book two, but now I’m not. Because it rocks. As covered, I’d made a few changes that thicken the broth, but James came back with some edits and suggestions that made me smack my head against a wall and simplify things.

My learning from this process is that focusing on the crimes and the villains before you do the outline is easier. I did change the MO as I was working on it, but I should’ve updated an earlier document to get to the heart of the issues. Anyway, this is why I outline – I’ve “wasted” about 200 words rather than 20,000.

One thing I’ve been meaning to do since Harrogate in July is set up my own bookshop for my books. Reader, meet Grey Dog Books:

https://www.greydogbooks.co.uk

There’s only one book there just now – FALSE START – but I’ll start adding my backlist to it over the next few weeks, starting with THE TURNING OF OUR BONES a couple of months ahead of its ebook launch. The books are printed on demand by Bookvault rather than Amazon and I get a much bigger cut of the royalty. I’ll see how sales go of these and adjust prices accordingly over time. One advantage is it’s a Shopify store so it hooks into Facebook, so I can use ads there and actually track them through to conversion, i.e. purchase. I feel like this could be a game changer for me. The recent stuff with Twitter has made me a bit twitchy about my dependency on big platforms like Amazon – my business is entirely subject to the CEO not getting up in the morning and deciding to change the KDP model entirely. I can hook this into Bookfunnel too so I can deliver ebooks (and audio!) that way. Let’s see how it goes and thank you if you decide to order the paperback through it! I’ll mess about with the look and feel over time, but it’s functional!

This Week

Bit of a travel this week. Down to London for some last-minute Fenchurch 9 location validation. Ahem. A lot later this time than before. If I’ve got time on Wednesday, I might get the train down to Brighton. I’ve never been there and have always wanted to go, so I just might!

Otherwise, it’s a case of getting my head down with Marshall 2. Day one was today (that counts as this week, right?) and I managed four chapters of 69, which was 5,244 words written. Which is a lot! But. It’s looking like 81k-ish, which is shorter than book 1, but as I’ll be editing as I go, it’ll swell up a little bit, probably closer to 90k. Anyway, I’ll be head down for the next month or so cutting this draft. It’s going to be a cracker, I think!

Let me know in the comments what sort of content you’d like to see – more writing tips? More musings? I was thinking of reviewing my 2022, warts and all – does that appeal?

Have a great week!

Cheers,
Ed