Lift me right out of this world

Status Report 2022-03-28

Hey there,

Hope you’re okay out there.

This week’s music is a kind of lost gem:

This is the Terry Farley remix of Primal Scream’s Come Together, of which the original has never been released (to my knowledge). This was the A-side of the single, played on the radio, whereas the B-side was the Andrew Weatherall remix aiming for nightclubs. Much like Loaded, which was a remix of the far-superior I’m Losing More Than I’ll Ever Have, the Weatherall version went on the album, Screamadelica. It’s a sprawling thing, lots of atmosphere and boogie, I guess, but the Farley remix has one of Bobby Gillespie’s best vocals, I think. Such a shame it’s stuck away on a 12” mixes compilation.

Anyway, I just finished reading his autobiography. Like so many of them these days (hello Brett Anderson), they stop when it gets interesting. Or at least, don’t cover as much of the interesting stuff as I’d like, saving it all up for book two. Anyway, I highly recommend it. I’ve got a gorgeous hardback edition that I raced through.

Last week

I did it! I finished the first draft of GUILT TRIP. It was pretty messy at the end, but I think the story all hangs together. I did a lot of corrective work to it, stuff that I captured as I wrote but which I didn’t fix. It’s in a good place. Vicky will ride again!

There are a couple of bits I’m pretty proud of in there. This is my most “winging it” book in years and there are some thematic things I really liked, including a connection between Vicky and another long-standing character of mine, which I’ll need to flesh out a lot more in the second draft, but it really resonates with the book and, ahem, what Vicky did in the last one.

I spent yesterday redoing all the paperback covers for Hunter, Dodds and Fenchurch, so they all match the current ebook versions. Pretty pleased with how they look now.

There’s a hardback of THE HOPE THAT KILLS, Mr Fenchurch’s debut outing. It looks pretty cool too, even if I do say so myself. A lot of that’s down to Amazon’s print-on-demand operation rather than my graphic design skills. If you want a copy, here they are:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Hope-Kills-Fenchurch-Crime-Thrillers/dp/B08Z2X27HZ/

(I’m looking into bookplates, which are little signed inserts for the books. Watch this space.)

I also took the decision to outsource my marketing to a third party. Turns out if you try and write the books as well as market them that bad things can happen. I outsource my editing, so why shouldn’t I do that? Hopefully it’ll give me space to work on more books, better books or at least have some time off where I’m not stressing myself daft about that kind of stuff.

This week

Well, I want to get Dodds 5 edited this week, but we’ll see how it goes. Got a few things going on, so I might not get around to it. I’ve got a long time to play with on that so, for once, I’m ahead of the game when it comes to my publishing.

I did this today:

It’s going back to an older graphic, but tying the colour together with the text and the new design. It might need to glow a bit more to stand out on Amazon, but I like it. Let me know what you think of it!

I’d love to get the whole series redone by the 10th anniversary on 15th April. Can’t believe it’s been ten years since I published it. Seems like a looooooong time, but also seems like five minutes.

Anyway, hope you have a great week out there and this glorious weather hangs around.

Cheers,
Ed