Clear me a space to gaze at the stars

Shadows & Ink 2025-04-21

Hey, it’s me. Aye, aye. I know.

I’ve shifted back to Substack, just because. If you’re getting this and you unsubscribed, then apologies -- the unsub link is below.

#Music

Totally forgot about this song and then spotted the CD on a shelf. It’s so pretty. And how the hell is it TWENTY-FOUR YEARS OLD?

#Last Week

Okay, so it’s been a few weeks, hasn’t it? Let’s recap...

1) Marshall 7

This came out on the 31st March -- in other time-related weirdness, how the hell is *that* three weeks ago?? I’ve been particularly blown away by the response to it. It’s always hard releasing books, but this was the first one in a wee while because I had my eye off the ball a bit. Six months is about the longest apart I can get, so I’m trying to cut the lag down to four months between books so I’m hoping to get the 8th and 9th out sooner than six months! But 8 might be August, or it might not...

2) PS02 Ghost 2025
3) PS03 Devil 2025
5) PS04 Fire 2025

And this has been the bulk of the year... Because I’m stupid, I’ve been editing the first four books I wrote. And this has been a genuine pain. Like, it’s really sore. In my head. All because I had to do a lot more than just fix the text, but all the stuff I’ve changed, removed or added make the books a lot richer and more consistent with later novels.

One of the things I’ve done is fix the locations -- it always bugged me how Devil and Fire were in East Lothian, so I’ve relocated Fire to Dalkeith in Midlothian (even though Dunpender is the name for the peninsula North Berwick is on). And speaking of North Berwick, well, Garleton doesn’t exist anymore so it’s all happening in North Berwick. The only thing that’s annoying is Angus has already recorded book 6, so I couldn’t kill Dalhousie – Cullen comes from a fictional town, sadly.

Each book has been difficult in their own way. Ghost was stuffed with too much plot and not enough character. Devil had too little plot and tension. Fire was just a bit of a mess and took a good chunk of punching and tightening to get it into a better place.

They’re as solid a set of stories now as I could get without completely rewriting them. I made big changes in book 1, which I’ve had to make sure I’ve caught up with in book 4... This is the chance to fix (almost all of) the stuff that’s annoyed me for years about these books and these will get to be the final canonical versions of the books. I hope you’ll enjoy them when they come out – I’m just waiting on edits to Fire in the Blood, then I’ll publish these new ebook versions and some new boxed sets too.

4) [Redacted]

This won’t come out until *checks notes* early 2026 but it’s now locked down and in copy editing. Pretty bloody pleased with how it’s come out, have to say. And it’s still a secret, though I’ve got the cover design nailed down and I love it.

8) PS10 The Lost / The Lost Souls

Have to say, after all that editing, I’m sick of Cullen and more sick of editing. I need to create new things! So there’s this, which is this is the expansion of the old novella Cuddly Toy into a full-length novel, by using up some cut material from Ghost and dramatising a lot of stuff that should’ve been dramatised and included.

After all that editing, I let myself spend a good chunk of time unpacking this novella and did an outline of how to expand it -- there’s another 15 new chapters to go in at the start. All good stuff and it was such a good experience to flex those muscles again.

Turns out I’m really bad at writing short books -- there’s a floor of about 50k based on the way I write.

7) PS05 Stab 2025

The final of the old edits and hopefully it’ll be the easiest. This time, I got an edit done on the existing material, so hopefully it’ll speed me up or just make it a lot less painful... Hopefully.

6) Marshall 8

So this is now my main focus. All of me is going into this book. Finally! I wish I’d been able to do it earlier in the year, but hey ho. It’s happening now.

Other projects

I’ve also had a little think about the Winter books and I think the concept is a bit tighter and more unique now. That series now has potential to be pretty bloody cool, but that’s for much later in the year.

#This Week

This week is all about the first draft of Marshall 8.

I’m feeling this is a good story -- and (it should be) shorter than book 7, so it that means it’ll be easy... Right?

For reasons I won’t go into just yet, I’m giving myself a deadline to fully finish the screenplay by the end of May -- and I mean, written and edited -- so when I pick it up in June, I’ll have a clear run at finalising the text and the book. And I want to do the edit of Stab, so I just might be able to do both. We shall see!

Just had Bessi in the vet today and she’s down to nine teeth, which isn’t great. She’s only 6.5 years old so that’s frightening.

Anyway, I’ll try and get these missives out again at a regular cadence now things are a bit saner – though it’s still an insane amount of work, isn’t it?

Cheers,

Ed