Writing Update #1: AVBT Edits; TMQ First Draft, Hospital Drama Short Story, & BYAI 2nd Edition...

Hello everyone,

Welcome to my new website! I hope you like it. It’s early days at the moment, but overtime I hope to add to it and grow it, and turn it into a real hub for everything.

One of the main things I want to do though is a frequent writing update (I’ve just done a poll on Twitter asking if you’d like these weekly or monthly, so we’ll see what the result is). I want to do this to give you a better insight of the bigger picture of what I’m working on and towards. I tweet about my writing progress, but that’s very much seeing the trees instead of the forest, and I know people are busy so don’t always get to keep up with Twitter – I know I don’t!

So, what am I working on?

At the moment my main priority is Book 4, currently entitled THE MISSING QUEENDOM. It’s a young adult book, but it started off as a middle grade book. It’s only after the first few initial chapters I decided to up the age of the main character. This was a conscious choice.

I envision THE MISSING QUEENDOM to be the first book in a series. I’ve never written a series before; I’ve always written standalones before now. Some of them have sequel/companion book potential, but this one will need a second book (and a third and fourth, and so on.) Because of what I know is coming up in the ARIAN CHRONICLES series, I knew the characters needed to be older, because in later books the plot thickens and becomes darker. I’m nervous about this project – I’ve never done a series before, so I’m already feeling the pressure.

At the time of writing this, I’m at 29,000 words into the first draft (142 pages). I planned on getting the first draft of this done before the end of May, but I’m currently about a week behind schedule, and honestly I think I’ll only become further behind schedule as the month progresses. We’ll see. I envision THE MISSING QUEENDOM being about 75,000 words long, so 45,000 words in a month seems hefty. I’ve done it before (NaNoWriMo!) so I know it’s possible, but unlike my other books I have to set up an universe to prop up the second book in the series. I have a release date in mind I’m shooting for with THE MISSING QUEENDOM, but because I’m unsure about making the deadline, I won’t share it just yet.

I’m also working on A VERY BLUE THING edits. This is publishing Tuesday 27th August 2019. That’s 17 weeks time. My editor and I think this will need one last round of edits, mostly to strengthen the ending. I’m planning on working on these in June once QUEENDOM draft is sent off to be edited. If QUEENDOM ends up taking longer though, I’ll have to work on both at the same time. It’s my longest book yet (about 83,000 words and the last round of edits will add more to it). I’m not worried though – this book should be all done by June!

Looking to the future, I’m thinking about my debut novel, BECOMING YOU AND I. My editor and I are considering re-editing it, as I didn’t have the same network as I do now, so we’re thinking a re-edit to bring it up to standard as my other books might do it some good, with a re-release and a brand new cover. Myself, editor, and a cover artist I’ve selected will be discussing this more in June/July time, so I’ll keep you updated. I’m not sure when it will be published, though – BLUE and QUEENDOM need to take priority at the moment! The original BECOMING will still be available, though!

I’ve also finished writing a short story, about 15,000 words, set in a hospital. Imagine a GREY’S ANATOMY but novel-form, and I’m currently playing with the second short story in the series. I’m not sure if I’ll publish this yet, but I’ve got the first six stories in “season one” plotted out. I’m thinking of sending it to my editor and seeing what he makes of it. I did some research on Twitter a while ago where people said they’d be interested in something like this, but I’m still unsure. Let me know what you think?

And for now, that’s pretty much it! I’m not sure whether I’ll be writing here again with another writing update in a week or a month (the poll I put up on Twitter lasts for 24 hours), but thank you for reading and for your continued support as always, and I’ll either see you next Saturday or at the start of June!