Hi folks, just a quick update on Delamere Nine (untitled).
I am now up to 60,000 words of the first draft, and the story is chugging along. I am at that point of thinking, ‘Is this going in the right direction?’, but I never let that worry me for long. If it’s going in some direction, at least it hasn’t run out of fuel, so let’s see where we end up. It is, after all, only a first draft. I have a climax to head to, and I have no idea how I’m going to get my heroes into that tricky situation without it reading as contrived, but I will manage something. The joy then comes in the editing and rewriting in draft two onwards. All the hard work will have been done (the blasting out of the words), and I can then play around with the details and descriptions.
If you like, the first draft is like building a house on your own by hand. Once you’ve done the hard graft of putting it together, though, you can then decorate and furnish it, and finally, when yore happy with it, live in it.
So, right now I have got foundations and a ground floor, but have two more floors to build. So, I’ll get on and leave you with another promo idea. Click the banner for more details of these historical mystery and romance novels.
Hello! The world is full of mystery and always has been, and that’s what makes the mystery genre so exciting. It offers so many possibilities to escape from the real world and dive into all manner of thrilling situations. And some that are calmer. Cosy mysteries such as ‘Home from Nowhere’, for example, where there’s no race to the finish line, or a slow-build mystery of self-discovery as found in ‘Guardians of the Poor.’ That book is currently in a collection called July Kindle Unlimited Mystery, Thriller, Suspense, & Crime Reads. It’s a bit of a title, but it leads you to 95 titles all available on KU.
The Witchling
I am two people in that collection, Jackson and James, and you’ll find my ‘The Witchling’ is in there. This is the second book in the Saddling trilogy, and part of the blurb reads: Six months after the life-changing events of The Saddling, Tom Carey must solve the witchling mystery and risk his life to save his lover.
I guess it was while writing this one, and the one that came after, that I started to realise it wasn’t exactly what I wanted to write. Maybe that’s why I never finished the quartet. Each of the Saddling books takes place in a season at the time of an equinox or festival and has an elemental theme. So, the Witchling, for example, is set in summer, the climax is at the solstice, and the element is fire. The Saddling (book one) is winter solstice and water, and the third, the Eastling, is autumn equinox and wind. The Needling was to be number four, set at the spring equinox with earth as the element, and was to lead to rebirth for the troubled village.
While writing what I did write of The Needling, I realised that what I wanted to do was write stories with central gay characters, and hence, Jackson Marsh was born.
A quick stop to admire the view from my office window this morning…
Honestly, it’s Free!
Before then, though, came ‘Remotely’, a straight/gay body-swap comedy, with a mysterious, timeless kind of enchantress as the protagonist, known only as Miss P. People liked Miss P and wanted more of her, so I started on another story called ‘Unforgivable,’ which was about Miss P saving the West End musical, but soon put that away in favour of a short novella, called ‘Honestly.’ There are now eight chapters of this here on my sit,e and the final four should be up within the week. You can read it all for free here, or splash out $0.99 and buy the eBook, or read it on KU. It won’t take long. Basically, it’s about what happens when people are made to be honest with each other, and it takes the form of a kind of Tom Sharpe style farce… almost.
Honestly – it’s free!
Meanwhile…
… back in mystery-land, I am doing well with Delamere Nine, which, for some ungodly reason, I have mainly set in a Suffolk village. Jack, Bax and Simeon have gone to the aid of a farmer whose son went missing not long after seeing strange lights in the sky. The first half sets us up nicely for a dangerous second half (I hope, I’ve not written it yet), the villains are the protagonists as well as the antagonists, but apart from that complication, it’s all coming along nicely in first draft form.
Newsletter
If you are on the mailing list, you should receive a newsletter later today listing all the promos and other news. You can, as always, help us all along by having a click and browse of these promos, and here, as a reminder, is the link to the July Kindle Unlimited Mystery, Thriller, Suspense, & Crime Reads. Have a good weekend, stay safe, and I’ll be back on Wednesday.
Delamere Nine is, as yet, untitled, but it is coming along. I am up to 33,000 words of draft one, and I know what’s been going on (though the detectives don’t as yet), and I know what the halfway point twist will be, and I have an idea for the climactic ending, I just need to get from 33% to 50% so the story can take an unexpected path, then from 50% through to crisis to climax to 100% done.
I’ve not completed the blurb for Delamere Nine as yet, I’ve not even completely mapped the story in my head or on paper, but I can give you a rough idea of what’s happening, without giving away any spoilers.
One night, a young storyteller sees strange lights in the sky over Suffolk. The next day, he retells the story to his dad, the local PC and others. They laugh at him, and he storms off, never to be seen again. A few days later, a woman’s body is found in a field. A few days after that, the dad arrives at Delamere House, having walked for two days and two nights to get there and begs for Jack Merit’s help. Jack, Baxter and Simeon head off to the depths of rural Suffolk, where they discover the dad’s house has since been ransacked, the boy is missing, and people are living in fear of the rural legend of the Fire Snake…
The writing continues as soon as I have posted this. Meanwhile, it’s a new month, which means new promos for you to either yawn at, ignore, click on or whatever. There will be a newsletter out on Saturday with all the links, but I’m going to start with this one as it comes first on my list of six. This one is called:
LGBTQIA+ Characters in Romance (all pairings)
A quick scroll shows me cabin romance, historical (Anne Barwell), topless hunks, fantasy romance, Jem Wendel’s ‘Resisting the Urge’, MM, FM, DD (Deviant Desire), and many other niches within the genre of nor under the umbrella of LGBT etc. romance.
As usual, if you feel able or interested, click the link and have a scroll through the titles. I now generate around 90% of my sales this way, and the more I promote, the more I get promoted (for free), so everyone is happy, especially me.
Click the banner to view all the titles
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