Hey. Are you okay? Hope so. Anyway. Here’s all about me.
Music:
Let’s be honest, the Eagles were a blight on music, but this is an absolute banger from the singing drummer.
Last week
I took most of the week off to do a bit of gardening. Look!
I’m really not green fingered, but I quite enjoy doing that kind of thing. Taking chaos and bringing order — that’s me. Need to fix that decking, ie burn it in the fields. Finding it very soothing doing a couple of hours every day. And Bessi loves being outside too.
The actual work I did was small amounts of dabbling around with a new idea that doesn't quite flow. Yet. I'll come back to it, because I've got other priorities. I spent a bit of time thinking what I should do next. Options were a new series, a book which I outlined as a potential sequel to SENSELESS (which isn't happening, by the way), another Cullenverse book, and some other stuff I can’t even remember.
Bottom line – I started writing FOLLOW THE LEADER on Saturday. It's book one in a new series. I don't know yet whether to publish it under a new name or Ed James, but right now I’m focusing on writing the thing and getting it working. I outlined it last year and reworked it a lot this year. Prevarication isn’t helpful, so I’m committing to writing this one and the first sequel before I do Fenchurch 9. Ideally a release six weeks apart sometime between September and November, then a third coming early next year. And a fourth after that. If it all works, great, I’ll do more. But at least I’ll have tried.
This week
Writing. Head down, cracking out the first draft. It’s got a monster outline of 25k, which I'm finding is way too much, but at least I know where it’s going. I’m able to focus on the characterisation and atmosphere because the story is all there. Putting it down as a narrative is a good test of the outline and I’m finding a few nice little things along the way. The main character is very distinct from Cullen, Hunter, Dodds, Carter and Fenchurch. I feel I know him already and it's fun introducing him to the wider cast of characters. So, that'll be me for three weeks or so. Good fun.
Crafty butcher
I try something new with each book. With FOLLOW THE LEADER, I’ve done a very detailed outline, which is 25k as I've said. Most of my previous books have been an outline of 4-6k. This had one of those, where the lead character was a woman but she didn’t have much to define her. I decided to gender-swap her and enrich his background, then I put down lots of development work in his “series bible”, which is four books laid out at a deeper level than an Amazon blurb, and with character arcs for the six or seven main characters.
Another new thing is how I execute it. What I usually do is write the book from start to finish. Don’t look back, you can never look back. This time, I’m editing yesterday’s work first. Three days in and I think it’s working nicely for this. Adding a few details, a few flourishes, and quite a lot of words as I go through it, but I’m sure I really know Marshall, the sarky sod.
One of the issues I have is I rush things and don’t think it all through. When I get into the third act of a book, I want to get to the end. And usually I’ve got issues because I’ve rushed things, but this way I’m getting a better feel for the flow and getting continuity between scenes. Hopefully the read through edit will be nice and smooth at the end.
Anyway, hope you have a great week!
Cheers,
Ed
The Eagles - A blight on music. Loved that!!!
Always up for a new series. Shame about Senseless I really enjoyed it.