Do me a favour, son

Shadows & Ink 2025-07-25

Hey! It’s still me!

Music

The Weight by The Band.

Started off listening to this because I was reading John Niven's debut novella, Music From Big Pink, which is set around the recording of the album this is from but from the perspective of the Band's drug dealer. It's an incredibly powerful and moving story, very different from his later stuff. And I hated the album. Just empty country rock. But something made me keep listening to it and this is the absolute highlight from that record. Even put "half past dead" as a potential book title in a file the other day.

Last Period

After a couple of weeks off, I got my head stuck into redrafting CUTS BOTH WAYS, which will be Marshall 9. It's taking me a lot of time to work through it, way more than I anticipated, largely because I'm changing an old story into something new – it's not the bits I'm changing or cutting that are the problem, but the bits I haven't written yet or hadn't written in the previous incarnation. Making some big structural changes to make sure it flows better too. But attending Harrogate book festival last weekend has wiped me out and I've been focusing on my sore back and some other stuff I've got kicking around, so this is stalled around 35,000 words. I usually work myself into the ground by trying to finish something by Harrogate but not this time. Still, I need to get out of this funk!

Next Period

I will get back to CUTS next week and keep progressing it, once my head's back in the game a bit more, so don't worry about that. Looking at Jan/Feb release, so there's plenty of time for it.

But I wanted to run something past you lot and I'd appreciate honest feedback.

In 2020, I published three FBI thrillers starring Max Carter, which sold poorly due to various factors, probably a mismatch between expectations of my writing and the fact they were thrillers set in Seattle. The publisher graciously reverted the rights back to me – but haven’t republished them. Now, I have a few options and don't know which to do.

First, I could just leave them as archived and they'll never see the light of day again.

Second, I could just publish them as is.

Third, I could do the edits I earmarked when I had Covid in Feb last year to resequence them to be stronger books.

Fourth, I have the idea to switch them to being set in Edinburgh.

The one I was working towards was the fourth, with CUTS being a sort of "backdoor pilot" for Winter and making sure her story flows well across CUTS and her first two books.

But I have concerns.

First, I'm feeling pretty jaded at the amount of editing work I’ve done this year, by touching up four old books into 2025 editions. My stalling progress on CUTS is clearly a factor in that, so to then do ANOTHER two books on the back of that feels like a lot, especially converting Seattle to Edinburgh and all the differences.

Secondly, I want to know how you would feel about it? Maybe you read the Carter books and loved them so me reusing them would make you feel cheated? Maybe you bought the first one and hated the location so you wouldn't mind it. Maybe you don't care. Maybe you want me to just focus on Marshall. Bear in mind, previous purchasers WON'T get new editions automatically like with Police Scotland etc as I didn't control those editions.

Please let me know what you think in the comments or by replying to this email!

Cheers,

Ed