Oh baby, it’s alright

Status Report 2022-04-18

Here’s a chord change that’ll make your knees buckle:

Last week

Managed to do a full edit of SCI-FI BOOK 1, which I really quite enjoyed doing. It’s expanded a lot, beefing up some things and solidifying the character stuff. I think there’s maybe a trick I’m missing in there, but it’s a solid story, I think, and reasonably unique. I’m glad I’ve done it, but whether anyone else enjoys it, that’s another matter.

I wrote a sci-fi crime novel a few years ago and it was really tough. The hardest part was I forgot to include a plot and character, so it was pretty much 80,000 words of description and worldbuilding. Whoops. Anyway, this book has plot in abundance but hopefully I’ve managed to pull off the character stuff I discovered as I wrote it. As usual, I’m feeling a bit daft that I didn’t do a proper outline, but I think it works very nicely.

The next thing with this is for my agent, Allan Guthrie, to read it and see what he thinks of it. I’m quite tempted to see if any traditional publishing editors want to buy it, as it means I just have to write the books (and do any publicity they think), so it’ll be less stressful. Last time I had a book out on submission, it was bloody awful. I hate waiting, I hate not being in control. This is something different, it’s not my bread and butter, so it’s got nowhere near the pressure a crime book would have.

Also, I think I mentioned about outsourcing my marketing, well that started in earnest last week. Nothing kicked in yet, but they’re reviewing my books and previous ads, etc. Hopefully will start to see results in a few weeks, spending less to make more would be nice.

This week

Nothing planned this week other than (HOPEFULLY, TOUCH WOOD) a successful procedure to get my heart back into sinus rhythm, then recovering from it. Don’t feel too bad this time, certainly compared with last time, so I’m hoping it’ll be a swift recovery and never slip back into it. I’ll have a notebook in hospital with me, as there’s a lot of waiting around. Might get some time to do some scribbles for FANTASY BOOK and, of course, Fenchurch 9.

Hope you have a good week. I’ll send another missive to let you know how it goes.

Cheers,
Ed