The pieces of the puzzle are waiting

Inside Ed’s Head 2023-12-18

Hey you.

#Music

Weirdly, I’ve been going through an Underworld period, so here’s “Pearl’s Girl” from Second Toughest in the Infants, my favourite of their albums. They’re an interesting act, because musically they sound a lot like other experimental electronic acts of the mid-90s, but Karl Hyde’s stream of consciousness lyrics add an X-factor to them, most famously on “Born Slippy .NUXX” (not to be confused with “Born Slippy”) (weirdly, my last two greyhounds, Misty and Rosie, were both descendants of Born Slippy). Hope you enjoy this and you don’t keep saying “Rioja, Rioja, Reverend Al Green” whenever someone mentions that wine;

#Last Week

My target for the week was to get over 20k. And I did that by scraping in with my edits on the morning of Saturday, despite all the crap going on. Which is mercifully all done and dusted. Nice to get back into the groove with this book now – I’ve since hit the 25k mark today, which is about 25% of the target (though it’ll probably end up shy of that). Also that’s 18/68 chapters, which is 26%. Remember: not all chapters are created equal – there are some lengthy chapters at the start where I set the scene and update on the events of the year since Marshall’s last outing (in a dramatic way), so I’ve had a chain of punchy and short chapters that raise the stakes in the A-story, then establish and progress the B- and C-stories.

I had my visit to Eyemouth yesterday, meeting Neil Broadfoot for lunch, and had a good mooch around the place, checking locations from the book match what I expect. And they did. Which is good.

It’s great advice for any author to visit the places you’re writing about, advice that came from Sir Ian Rankin, as he’d set a murder scene in a location that actually features a police station. This is my annual recommendation to watch the episode of Imagine, where Alan Yentob monitored him writing Standing in Another Man’s Grave, the Rebus comeback novel:

I did the proofing for Fenchurch 10, so that’s all uploaded and ready to rock on the 31st! Phew! All I need to do is the paperback file.

Had a bit of an accident where the audiobook files for Fenchurch 4 & 5 and the Marshall prequel, False Start, all got approved rather than going on preorder. So they’re all available to buy now. I think book 6 might be coming soon, then there’ll be a few months, but hopefully all ten Fenchurch books will be done by mid-summer in audio. I am blown away by how successful they’ve been and, rest assured, there’ll be much more in that space soon.

#This Week

There won’t be any updates from me as I think it might be Xmas. Then New Year. I’ll be doing some work over the period – momentum am everything – but maybe not going hammer and tongs. I’m pretty tired and could do with a few days off!

And something tells me I should probably think about Xmas presents, right? (I’ve bought tons of them!)

Thanks as ever for reading these updates. I think this is my fifth year of doing them, maybe? It’s a good way of keeping myself accountable and apologies if some of it’s boring, but I do try to put the exciting stuff on the page.

Anyway, have a great Xmas and I’ll wish you a happy New Year when it’s appropriate to. But not now.

Cheers,
Ed