Inside Ed's Head: A dose of thrush you got when licking railings

Status Report 2022-06-20

There was a spell when Belle and Sebastian were one of the best bands in Scotland, if not Britain, then they became just another rock band (fans will know what I did there). This tune from the amazing period. Sure, there’s a lot of Nick Drake vocally, and Barrett-era Floyd, in amongst all the 80s British indie sonics, but this is such a tune. Monica Queen’s vocal is WILD.

Let me know if you enjoy the music!

Last week

Lots of work on FOLLOW THE LEADER last week, 19k written. It’s still not finished – been a LOOOONG time since I’ve written anything this long, but it’s also been a LOOOONG time since I’ve enjoyed writing anything as much as this. It’s quite an angular story, if you will, with weird twists and so on. It’s the most backstory-heavy thing I've done (though the last two Cullen and Bain books were maybe that level), but I think I’ve handled it well. It honestly feels like I could keep on writing it, which is a good sign as I plan to do another three and a prequel novella/short story. I’m really proud of how the series bible work means I’ve differentiated each of the cop characters. They’ve got wants and needs, and are dickheads in their own specific ways. Also, their good points are unique.

I would’ve done more, but I buggered my back on Thursday. Woke up with a burning pain over my right hip. Couldn’t get comfortable at all. Eventually, managed to get up, but my car battery was flat. Taxi to doctors to collect some codeine and that did the trick. This afternoon, I had a sports massage and it was incredible. Very floaty and woozy afterwards, but I’ve got weak gluteals and have a couple of exercises to help. For a big lad, I haven’t got much of an arse.

Weird thing on Friday. Gore Glen has been in a monthly deal all month, 99p down from £2.99 and hasn’t really done anything, which is typical of my experience of Monthly Deals since about 2017. Then on Thursday, it sold a decent amount and I expected it to drop off but no, it went haywire on Friday and got into the Amazon UK top 100, climbing to 49 eventually. Me and the Amazon top 100 used to be besties. Like, SO tight. Now he doesn’t call me, doesn’t write, just the occasional like of a tweet about a new book. So it’s incredibly nice to be back in there again. And such a weird book to get that huge spike from, but I’m very, very grateful for it.

Next week

I’m on the final stretch of FOLLOW THE LEADER. Hoping I can get that finished tomorrow and go through the tons of changes I’ve noted as comments. Hundreds of them, I think, mostly minor (e.g. check this is his name). One is definitely a new prologue, which will give a better opening, and another scene that backs up the rest of it and allows me to cut some exposition.

If I get that done, I’ll sit with it for a couple of weeks. Got a bit of work to do on DIE ON MARS, which is the title of the sci-fi book. It’s been burning away in my brain for the last few weeks and I think I’ve got enough ideas to resequenced and expand it to where it needs to be. It’s been a bit painful as I pivoted a few too many times away from the initial outline, so I lost the bigger picture with it. There’s a lot of character stuff in there that I really like. Weirdly, it's got a similarity to the Cullen books (I think you can guess what I mean by that), but the overall story needs a bit of tidying.

Finally, I've been thinking about doing some different stuff in the Cullenverse. Think of something like the Hunter short I did in January. Serialised, so it’s delivered weekly. Would you be interested in that? Also, what sort of platform would you like? A mailer like Substack, so it’s in your inbox, or something like Patreon that sends you a Bookfunnel link? It’d be paid content, so say £2 a month for a chapter a week, a year ahead of release on any other platform (Amazon, probably). I was thinking the content would be done via a poll, so if you wanted another Hunter short, you’d have to persuade people in the Facebook group to vote for it. Or if you wanted Cullen, on you go.

Let me know by replying to this or leaving a comment if it’s something you’d be interested in.

Thinking I might record this missive as a podcast too. Though the music will be a bit tricky. I’m in an experimental mood!

Have a great week.

Cheers,
Ed