Inside Ed’s Head: No Regrets

Status Report 2022-10-10

Hey there.

I sent out my main mailing list yesterday and got a lot of sign ups to this. A huge thanks and warm welcome to everyone who did and I hope you enjoy this – if you get bored of it, just unsubscribe, I won’t mind. Honest!

Some weeks are better than others, as the regulars will be able to tell you – huge thanks to all of you for staying the course and letting me have the weekly discipline to keep myself focused.

Here’s this week’s music:

My mum’s a massive fan of the Walker Brothers, especially Scott Walker and their 60s hits. A few years ago, I got into his solo stuff, especially Scott IV which is an absolute masterpiece. But I recently got into the Walker Brothers’ seventies stuff – the “Nite Flights” album is up there with his solo stuff. Anyway, I hope you enjoy the song.

Last week

Okay, so last week was mostly devoted to the second DI Rob Marshall book. It _was_ called SHADOW ON THE DOOR, but now I’m calling it WHERE OUR BODIES LIE. I’ll cover the plot in a later missive, probably once the first one’s out, but I’m actually really liking the process of doing so many books back-to-back, then seeing how they fare. It’s a no-regrets process (see what I did there?), where I know the books will do a certain level but have the possibility of doing really well. I’m all about trying new stuff just now and not resting on my laurels.

As you’ll all know, I’m a heavy outliner (hey, I put on weight when I had covid – I’m trying to lose it), so I sculpt out the story before I start writing it. I know where it’s going, who did it and why. Well, usually I do. It can be that the process of turning the outline into a completed narrative unearths some opportunities for better stuff or – far more likely – some previously undiscovered issue that I haven’t noticed or thought about, so I have to go back and rework the whole thing.

The advantage of outlining is that you’ve got a 5-10,000 word version of the story, so when it inevitably falls all over the floor, it’s much “cheaper” to fix that outline than 80,000 words of a 90,000 word novel that’s gone wrong.

I told you a few months ago that I’ve done a “series bible” for the Marshall books so, unlike the Cullen books but more like the Fenchurch books, I know where it’s going. I’ve got books 2-4 at a very summarised level. 3 and 4 are pretty solid. 2, a lot less so. The detail of the plot that I’ll let you know now is it was a serial killer hunting down Incels – for those of you who don’t know what one is, it’s a shortening of Involuntary Celibates. Basically, young men who think they should be able to have sex with any women they want to. Ironically, the term was coined by a bisexual woman in the 90s who wanted to have sex but wasn’t getting any satisfaction. She stepped away from that and the far right in America took it over and it’s all associated with the MAGA/Insurrectionist nutcases.

But I didn’t want to write about those pathetic guys. And I think that paragraph ^^^ there is about all you lot probably want to read about it. So I’ve spent a few days changing the villain’s MO to something that’s much cooler and more unique. I’m pretty pleased with where it’s taken. I realise these books are a lot more high-concept than most of the things I’ve done in the past – still not the “holy crap, that’s so obvious but nobody’s thought of it” style, but definitely much more focused and “oooh that’s cool”. A lot of those books have a poor execution or daft explanations for the impossible setup. I’m spending a lot longer on the outline so I get it as right as I can.

I had 11 chapters of the prologue and another 10 of the novel on Tuesday. I whittled that down to 8 and four, but I’m slowly building it back up. Aiming for about sixty so that it’s the same length as book one. It might sound a bit mathematical, but then book lengths are – you can tell the same story in 30, 60, 90, 120k, it just depends on how thick you make the soup, how many more complications and how much personal story you add in.

This week

I say last week was mostly devoted to that, because there were a few hours devoted to the copy edit of FALSE START, which has now been proofed (thanks, Mare!) and will be ready to go out this week. I’m going to plan out the launch of this as I want to grow the main mailing list a lot over the next year. This long novella / short novel underpins the first book in the series, THE TURNING OF OUR BONES, even though Marshall isn’t in it. So. Watch your inbox for something free! And some giveaways...

An outside chance I’ll get Fenchurch 9 back to edit, which will swallow up a chunk of time. But time well spent with that grumpy sod.

The rest of this week will be devoted to hopefully finishing the outline to WHERE OUR BODIES LIE. I’m confident I’ll get there – let’s see how I do next week.

I’m off to meet an old friend in Edinburgh to watch the Last Podcast on the Left live show. No trains, so I’m driving in. Joy! Have a great week.

(Just realised I’ve got used to my new keyboard! That’s a yay! It’s pretty good to type on and has a really satisfying weight to it.)

Cheers,
Ed