Hey,
Hope you’re all doing okay out there and the storm didn’t wreak too much havoc. For international readers, the UK was brutalised by 120+MPH winds. A few more trees down here, but I avoided most of the wind, just a lot of that dreaded snow, which I know some people love.
This week’s music is this:
A collaboration between Bernard Sumner (of Joy Division and New Order), Johnny Marr (of the Smiths) and Neil Tennant (of the Pet Shop Boys), it’s a glorious pop gem. I had a discussion with Mark Edwards about whether it’s the best song any of them have featured on, and I think it just might be. (Though it’s allegedly about how Morrissey was in love with Johnny Marr.)
But I do love getting wet on purpose.
And yesterday, I went for a delayed walk with one of my oldest friends, Paul. We were supposed to walk last week but it was too wet for him, the poor thing. This time we met at a community woodland just over the county lines from Midlothian into the Borders, and a few miles south of Penicuik. And we completely missed the community woodland, instead walking for miles through farms in the driving rain, then forcing a tearoom to stay open for a shivering pot of tea.
I shared a flat with Paul at uni in our third and fourth years and he’s the reason I’m writing this, basically. Back in 2011, I’d given up on writing. I’d written GHOST IN THE MACHINE in 2009, but got rejected by all sorts of agents, despite an unheralded couple of full reads. It made me even more determined to succeed, so I planned out how I’d fix all the perceived flaws in it. Then did nothing with it for eighteen months. Then Paul, who had read it, suggested I pick it up and self-publish it, as the Kindle was starting to take off around then. So, it’s all down to him that I did tackle those brutal edits and put myself through the mill of self-publishing over thirty novels.
Cheers, Paul. Love you, man.
Last Week
Well, it’s been a very busy week. Even thinking about it is making me feel all exhausted.
Okay, so I did a first cut of the series bible to my new police procedural books. I found it a very useful process. I’ve done a lot of retrospective reflection over my books and I can see there’s a complete absence of strategy or plan, at least on my part. The Cullen books, particularly, sort of bounced from book to book. The Fenchurch ones were better, there’s a solid through line and evolution of the old rascal, but the Hunter books a lot less so. Vicky Dodds is doing much more of the Cullen winging it, but she’s got much more of the Fenchurch style character evolution.
Still, the new stuff is feeling pretty solid. Like I said last time out, I did a detailed outline for the first book in the summer, but never wrote it. Well, as part of this, I’ve got character arcs for the main 6/7 recurring people, which means I also came up with a couple of little tweaks to make a little bit less obvious and a lot less clichéd. Having that work in the bank helped flesh out the very loose ideas for the second and third books. The third I had a cool title but nothing else, really. Now, I’ve got a lot more of a solid story, plus it’s now the second book so it supports a lot of the character stuff needed in the third book to support the fourth book, which culminates a lot of the plot lines. Needs more work to nail down the story beats, but I think it’s getting into the right place now.
I wondered if doing that would make me realise how daft it was to consider it, but the truth is, it’s made me much more excited about the books. And doing it this way is making me a lot less impatient. I’m more content to sit on things for a bit to let them stew, if that makes sense.
A lot of the other stuff I did last week has been tightening up the book covers and blurbs of my back catalogue. I think I’ve let a lot of that slide, but I tweaks and amended the Fenchurch books so they popped a lot more and did an A+ box for the books, a wee graphic that appears on all of the book pages:
Hopefully you agree that they pop on the page a lot more. Definitely need a much stronger first book image as it looks very washed out as a thumbnail (it’s a deserted playground, but it’s a bit meh).
I redid all of the Vicky Dodds covers too:
I switched the fifth cover to the first as it’s the strongest (and also to signify a bit that it’s different to the others, so the fact it’s half the length won’t be too annoying).
So much happier with these. They work as a unified thing, fit the genre well, but I’m so fed up stripping out pixels from around that woman in various poses. You have no idea. I never thought I’d be able to design book covers, but here I am. These are going to stay for the rest of their lives. I’ll need to update the print and audiobook editions this week. Sigh.
This Week
This week’s just more of the same, head down on a couple of edits. LOST CAUSE, hopefully, and SECRET SCI-FI PROJECT too. Also finishing the series bible for the new stuff and seeing where my head’s at for the next project, which should probably be tackling the next Vicky Dodds book.
Hope you have a cracking week. More of this sort of nonsense in just seven days time.
Cheers,
Ed
Morning Ed ,I have read all your books and look forward to the next one ,I love your weekly reports. The weather sounds bad but not as bad I’m here in the Highlands,I’m off for my 2 hour walk with my friend and her dog Bree ( bree is from Outlander) dry so far so I’m off. Sheena Baxter
Loving the updated covers