Can we start again?

Status Report 2022-05-30

Last one of May and some music:

A lovely live performance of the Tindersticks’ Can We Start Again?, one of their poppiest songs, which is stuck in my head a lot just now. Lots of lovely soft-shoe shuffling going on there. A better sounding version here, but no video:

Last week, I got some complaints for describing the Eagles as “a blight on music”. Sorry, I was joking. A bit.

A big album recommendation — “A Light for Attracting Attention” by The Smile, which is Thom and Johnny from Radiohead and a really good drummer doing minimal experimental guitar and keyboard music. Loving it, some moments of beauty with the sparseness of Thom Yorke’s excellent solo albums.

On to the stuff about me.

Last week

Okay, so I started my first new book in aaaaaages and it’s going well. The last two projects were bowdlerising old, unfinished books into new things, which was more of an editing project that creative. It’s good to cut the words, managed 32k in a week, which is bonkers.

I know I always say it, but I really am enjoying writing this. It’s great to do my first new first book since Hunter 1 in 2016 (ignoring Max Carter, which most people did). A lot of that time has been spend adding books to Cullen and Dodds and most, if not all, of the Fenchurch books. Having no established continuity is nice. No connections to anyone else, just this book (and the next and the one after that).

I even took this weekend off because 1) the weather was lovely and I wanted to build my wall and 2) my brain was dribbling out of my ear. My wall:

My wall, yesterday

I’ve become obsessed with stones. I found a big supply of them down by the river so had to strim down to it, then carry a ton up in the wheelbarrow (the one on the right). That bush is moving. Next is to balance the levels out with new soil, plant up some bushes and some bark chips. I’m becoming tempted at doing the same with the outer ring, which you can see bits of here. Would like them to be wild flowers, rather than just grass, but hey! I’ll get there!

Can’t believe I’m into gardening.

Next week

This week, I’ll be focusing on another big chunk of FOLLOW THE LEADER. I’ve been editing as I go, which is something I’ve stopped doing after a while, but I’m seeing the benefit in terms of continuity — editing yesterday’s work is giving me ideas for today’s stuff. I had a bit of a boring chain of scenes, but lingering over them a bit longer has given me a much stronger and beefier sequence of scenes, where I lead the reader down a path and take them (and the character) to a new one.

Still capturing a lot of comments on things to fix as I go, but that’s fine. It’s nice having the luxury of time to make sure the book is as strong as possible and not hammering out a word count, even though I’m actually achieving both, weirdly enough.

Anyway. That’s me. Hope you have a good week, speak to you next week.

Cheers,
Ed