Show me what that loaded gun is for
Inside Ed’s Head 2023-10-09
Hey!
#Music
This weekend I was in Gerrards Cross, Buckinghamshire, for a book festival. We did karaoke on-site and my pal Susi Holliday sang this. When you can see the words, you can see how filthy they are.
#Last Week
Last week centred around the book festival, Chiltern Kills, which was run by my good pal Tony Kent and a few others. Set in a leafy Bucks village, it felt like a mature festival, rather than one in its first year. All proceeds went to charity, with CentrePoint receiving a giant cheque at some point soon to help their great cause.
I did a panel with Fiona Cummins, Clare Mackintosh, Jane Casey and Gytha Lodge (our participating moderator) to a very sizeable audience and I only made a massive blunder once (in response to a question about whether we’d date any of our characters, I accidentally said something sexual about Vicky Dodds). Here’s us:
(My face is red from a bit of sunburn – it was melting there, warmer than a Scottish summer. In October.)
After some fascinating panels and time spent catching up with old pals, it was time for me to assist Mark Edwards run the karaoke experience, two hours of singing and a lot of dancing. I got into the mood:
Sunday was a dreadful day of a 7.30 start, followed by a six-step journey home, including taking a tube from Bucks into Central London and a rail replacement bus north of Newcastle. This was taken walking up the road from the hotel to the train station in Gerrards Cross:
On Wednesday, I met my audiobook narrator—the one and only Angus King—for a coffee and some cake in Melrose. We had a good chat and put the world to rights. Here’s us outside Marshall’s nick in Melrose:
I did do some work last week! Mainly on Operation High Concept, though. It’s shaping up very, very nicely. I’m up to halfway through the outline, with some stuff I’m pretty pleased with and proud of. Like any first cut it’s a bit messy in places, but the whole point is to get the whole story told in a few words, so I can fix all the defects before I expand it out into a full narrative. Quite often, it’s only when I get to the end that I can see stuff that’ll fix earlier problems. Or can identify big problems without having wasted work.
#This Week
I’m trying to get a first pass outline done in the next few days, which I can spend sometime editing into a better shape before sending to my agent for a review.
One of the things I’m learning about this book is the importance of theme. Usually most crime writers will say the theme comes them after the book’s written. And I’d be one of them. This time I identified it first, right at the start, once I had the crime and the setup. Everything comes from that central theme, so the first question is “does this fit the theme?” rather than something else. I’m hoping it’s going to pay off with the final novel! I have to stick to my process of divining a story, then being able to thicken the broth as I go through it. At this early stage, though, I feel it’s going to be an easy book to write, especially given all the plot work I’ve done up front. Which I hope isn’t going to damn it! I’ve got a pretty clear week so I’ll be able to get stuck in with it.
Anyway, that’s quite enough from me – have a great week.
Cheers,
Ed
Love the wig 😂