Tag Archives: Writing process

WIP: An Odd Way Round

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I’ve been working on ‘A Case of Make Believe’ but I have been going about it in an odd way – odd for me. Usually, I start at the beginning and plough on until the end, then go back and start again. This time, though, I have already written the climax in first draft form, and I have taken the story to almost the crisis just before the climax, and now I’ve stopped and gone back to the beginning. Why? Ah ha! I am glad you asked…

Something was missing. Every story should have some kind of emotional throughline that will engage the reader. In ‘Finding a Way’ and ‘A Fall From Grace’ it was Jack and Larkin gradually getting together, so it was a kind of falling in love throughline. There’s also one in ‘Where There’s a Will’, but for the secondary characters, and not so much of one in ‘Follow the Van’, apart from Jack possibly being misled. However, when we get to book five, ‘A Case of Make Believe’, Jack is settled in his love life, and Will is happy, but there was no emotional tug. Yet, there should be and there is… there was… I just hadn’t realised what it was. So now, I am going back over draft one which is 80% completed, to complete draft two up to 80%, and while I am doing it, I am adding in and highlighting the emotional throughline that was there but not there.

I know what I mean!

Hopefully, I will have the second draft/first draft completed by the end of the month, and then I will set about the other things which need to happen; cover, editing, proofing etc. So, we should be looking at September for release?

Meanwhile, I am thrilled to say ‘Bobby’ is doing very well and my godfather’s story is being widely read – so he will be happy about that. I am also taking part in another BookFunnel/Book Mojo promo, so any clicks you can give the banner below would be greatly appreciated. (No cost to you, but each click brings me a better reputation.) these promos are working really well for me, so it would be great if you could support them with a click.

https://books.bookfunnel.com/mysthrillsus-aug/6yfa21rq1b

I should be here on Saturday. I missed last Saturday for various reasons (having a cold and no motivation, mainly), but I’m back up and running now, and I will think of something to tell you by then. Happy reading!

A Case of Make Believe

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Here’s an update on my current work in progress, ‘A Case of Make Believe’, which is still a working title and not yet finalised. I am up to chapter 17, around 65,000 words and it’s strange…

Usually, a story will flow in order of events, and after I’ve done the first draft, I might go back and move things around. However, I usually start writing at chapter one and wander forwards from there. With this one, I wanted to get the finale down on paper so much I have already written it, and that’s very unusual for me. I needed what was the opening chapter to tie up exactly with the finale/climax, so maybe that was why I did it that way around. Now, though, that opening chapter has become the ‘smoking gun’ and won’t appear at the beginning, it will have to slip in later on, otherwise, I will have given away too much at the start…

It’s still interesting, though, how things can be chopped and changed, and how as a writer you come to instinctively know when something is or isn’t right. At first, the opening (a piece by Larkin Chase published in a newspaper in 1893) seemed to be exactly right for how I wanted things to start. Now, though, 65,000 words in, I can see that it needs to come later. The important thing, though, is that it’s written, and as I always say, ‘Don’t get it right, get it written.’ Then later, you can get it right.

What’s also interesting about this one is that I feel like I want to get to the denouement already. I aim for around 90K to 100K words per novel these days, so the reader has plenty to get their teeth into. This one, at 65K feels like I could be done with it by 70K, and that sets off alarm bells for me. It means there’s something missing, and I know what it is. So, that will have to be written in when I get to draft two.

Still, it’s fun, there are a couple of new characters, a lot of darkness and villainy, and some not very nice things going on in the criminal underworld of London in 1893, making this one probably my darkest to date.

It will also be thrilling, I hope, and talking of thrilling… Here’s another list of over 100 titles for you that will interest you if you’re into thrillers and adventure novels. Click the banner, head to the page and have a free browse to see if there’s anything there you’d like to read while you wait for ‘A Case of Make Believe.’

Mayhem & Motives. Over 100 thrillers to read on Kindle and KU

All Over the Place

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All Over the Place

It’s been a week of varied research for me. Just a quick look through my current work-in-progress folder shows me all kinds of images ranging from the anatomy of a cutthroat razor to the sewer system and the River Fleet. In fact, this week, I have been to so many places, my blog post will simply be a list of them. So, here you go:

Whitechapel

Whitechapel High Street 1890

A molly house
(An old term for a gay brothel)

Rhodes (I had a day away)

(Underneath) The Egyptian Hall, Piccadilly

The London sewers

(Photo from: http://www.adeadendstreet.co.uk/2014/11/river-fleet-cso-london.html

The River Fleet
At Farringdon, pre 1846

The incomplete Tower Bridge
(The bridge was completed and opened in 1894)

Circa 1893 or early 1894

And Delamere House, which I don’t have an image of, only what’s inside my head, and hopefully, yours if you have started on the series.

Book five is progressing well, and there will be more news about that on Wednesday.

A Quick Update on Make Believe

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I haven’t had time to prepare anything in-depth for this week’s work-in-progress update, so this is only a quick update on Delamere five, ‘A Case of Make Believe.’

I am at 40,000 words of draft one, my team are visiting the London sewers with a guide, and examining the inspection chamber beneath the Egyptian Hall in January 1893. The story is unfolding nicely, not too fast, not too slow (I hope). The new character of Ned (full name Edgar Maddiver) is settling into Delamere house where there is now also a housekeeper, Mrs Sparks. Jack, the MC for this tale, has been to Whitechapel, visited a molly house, in his quest for information, and yet, the case is only moving forward in fits and starts, despite being an urgent matter. There have already been magicians and disappearing acts, and there will be more.

That’s where I am with the book, which I shall return to writing in a moment. I was off yesterday as I had to visit Rhodes and see a doctor about my tennis elbow (which comes from too much typing, apparently), but all is good, and will get better.

Lastly today, the promos are doing me well, and it really does help if my readers at least browse some of the books on offer. The important thing to do is to click the link (the image below), because that registers that I’ve sent people over to view other author’s work, which in turn, gives me a good promo reputation and keeps me in the promos, and that means I get to sell more copies so I can afford to see a doctor about my author’s arm… and so on. Click the banner, and enjoy your reading!

Click for a load of books!

Starting Again

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This week’s Work In Progress blog update.

Bobby, a Life Worth Living, is doing well, and I have had some great feedback already. It’s wonderful to hear that his story resonates with so many people, and they have volunteered their own snippets of older relations’ stories. I am waiting for some leads so I can try and copy some of our interviews onto the PC and from there, to this website, so readers can hear Bobby talking about his past. That’s a project for the future, and I’ll let you know if I am successful.

Where There’s a Will is doing brilliantly in the charts, and has already gained some four- and five-star ratings. Good old Will!

A Case of Make Believe

Well now, this is the working title of Delamere book five, and Make Believe is written that way for a reason. The idea is to have someone be made to believe something and it’s all to do with magic acts and the Victorian passion for macabre shows, the famous decapitation tricks of the Egyptian Hall, and the weird and wonderful of Maskelyne and Cooke’s entertainments.

But not everything is going to plan, so the title may change, although the subject of this mystery won’t. I have already changed the first 14,000 words. Let me explain…

I began on the story, setting it in January 1893. On James Wright’s 30th birthday, actually, January 10th. By then, Delamere House has a housekeeper and a new detective. I started the story from Will’s point of view, and immediately had Jack and Jimmy setting off for Paris to solve an urgent case at the Paris Opera House.

This was to set things up for book six, which may well have something to do with a phantom at the Opera House (left), and thus, become the inspiration for the novel by Gaston Leroux, which he will publish in serial form, starting in 1909… but that’s another story.

Back at Delamere, we were introduced to the new housekeeper, and the new detective, and then a new case arrived at the end of chapter one, and in chapters two and three, Will said goodbye to Jack, and was left in charge of the agency and… It didn’t work. As soon as Jack and Will were separated, the thing fell flat. Add to that, too many new faces and too much domestic detail, and I knew I was off to a false start. So, I have set those first 14,000 words aside. (There’s a good idea in there for a short story, and I might well do another ‘1892’ for Christmas, maybe ‘1891’, I’ll see.)

Now, I have started again with the same villain in mind, and the same background, but I’m coming at it from a different angle. The story now opens with a piece by Larkin Chase, and he’s describing a theatrical event that, later in 1897, would become Le Théâtre du Grand-Guignol, specialising in naturalistic horror shows. My version, in 1893, is a forerunner, if you like, and it’s a bit of make-believe itself because I am sure the mystery shows of the time didn’t go as far as Grand Guignol, but like the Phantom of the Opera, the Delamere case might well be the inspiration for creatives of the future.

So, that’s where we are.

This week’s promo to click on and check out for more reading, is all about MM Romance novels. This is running all month, the books are all available through Amazon, and there are plenty of your favourite niches and tropes included. Have a click and enjoy your reading!

Where There’s a Wait

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Today, I was hoping to tell you that ‘Where There’s a Will’ was available on Kindle, but for some reason, it’s taking a long time to show up. Its official status is ‘Publishing’, which means it’s passed all the stages and is simply waiting to go live. This usually happens within three hours, but so far, it’s taken two days. They say in the small print that it can take up to ten days, which seems incredibly slow for a computerised, automated process.

Meanwhile, the print version is available for those who, like me, prefer to buy paperbacks, and here’s the link:

Where there’s a Will

Will and Jack Merrit are set a simple task: Journey to an island in the Bristol Channel to attend the reading of a will. Why? No-one knows.

Charles Marisco can guess what’s in his father’s will. Everything will go to his twin brother, Simon, because he was born first. However, Charles has other things on his mind, namely, his best friend, Barrett Newton, a man he would like to know more intimately.

A storm-lashed castle, a remote island, and a cast of eccentric characters set the stage for Will and Jack Merrit’s most baffling case yet—one that grows deadlier as the body count rises.

This is the fourth book in the Delamere Files series.

The books should be read in order.

I have family visiting right now, so I shan’t be starting on the next story until next weekend, when I will get straight back to it. I have several ideas, some situations I’d like to explore, some historical occasions from 1893 I’d like to look at further, and I have several ideas. So, I need to decide which one I am going to run with and focus on that. While I’m doing that, I will also be finishing ‘Bobby – a Life Worth Living’, the story of my late godfather which is also a kind of walk through 20th century gay Britain, or one gay man’s life from 1919 to 2007, and I can tell you it is a remarkable true story. I did most of the work on this book several years ago and then I set it aside as I wasn’t happy with my style. Now, after I’ve matured a little as a writer, I am able to do the story justice. I’ve added some deeper research I was unable to do 20 years ago, and have knocked the MS into a reasonable shape. As soon as I can afford it, I will commission Andjela to do me a cover, get the OWI guys to do the layout, and it’ll be ready to go. Or will be ready to sit in the Amazon ‘publishing’ queue for a few days…

For now, though, it’s back to my enforced holiday; a trip out for lunch, my piano student this afternoon, and a friend’s terrace for the evening. It’s 36° outside most of the time, so we’re going slowly and drinking loads of water. Here are some views to see you through the weekend.

Closing in on the Last Chapters

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Just a quick update. I am now at 85,000 words of the first draft of ‘Where There’s a Will,’ and it’s all starting to kick off. We’ve had a long trail of seemingly random clues, and now, they’ve all got to tie up and tie in, so I can tie up the draft and get to the really fun stuff, the editing and rewriting.

The other day, someone said something which warmed me old cockles. It was either in a review or in a group, but they were saying how much they like my transformation scenes, as I call them. I also rather like them because they are good for the passing of time and place, and they are relatively easy to write. I just picture it in my head and out it comes. What am I talking about?

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07RPCKF4L

One of the times that stands out for me happens in ‘The Clearwater Inheritance’, and it’s more or less the beginning of the climax. Jasper and Fecker are on the Orient Express, and Jasper has something of a crisis, but we leave his scene in their compartment and see them through the window. Then the ‘camera’ takes us along the train, through the steam and smoke, over the snowy fields lit by moonlight, across France, over the Channel, across London and down to Larkspur in one take, as it were. I’ve used the technique in other novels. In ‘The Larkspur Legacy’ I do it on the back of a storm in one place, and another train in another case, and there is often an owl at Larkspur that sees things while moving us around the Hall and grounds.

As Jack Merrit would say, ‘Anyways…’ I’ve just done a similar transition scene in ‘Where There’s a Will.’ Just thought I’d let you know.

Don’t forget to click over and have a browse through the historical novels and academia-based romances in the KU promotions.

Willing

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Just a quick hello today, as I have got behind on jobs and chapters this week. I did manage to get some research done, though, and did a lot of reading which, in the end, wasn’t that helpful. I was trying to find out about wills and bequeathments, so I turned to a friend who is a genealogist for advice. My imaginary will was written in about 1862, and I was trying to find an example of a will from that time so I could copy the wording. I have seen some from my family of the past, but they were 18th-century ones, and I thought there would be a difference. Turned out, I was right. Here’s what my friend wrote back:

The key thing is that in 1858 everything changed. Up until then, wills were written for and proved in the various church courts, so they were both kind of religious documents (the testament) and a disposal of worldly goods (the will). So they were a mix of the religious and the legal, and proved in the court of the Archbishop, or bishop, Dean and chapter, or archdeacon, as appropriate.

In 1858, all that changed and the wills were written for, and proved in, the High Court of Justice, in the newly established probate division. So they ceased to be religious documents and became purely legal ones. You no longer get all that stuff about believing in the merits of Christ as Saviour and believing in the Resurrection. And usually, out goes all the stuff about being decently buried in a good Christian manner. Although you still often get some instructions to executors about the burial where the will-maker had some definite preferences. Extravagant brick-lined graves, for example.

I don’t think I have any from around the 1880s, though I will have a look. The only way to get wills from the post-1858 period is to apply to the High Court Probate Division with the index details and pay a fee. They are not available on Ancestry unless an Ancestry member has gone through the application process then scanned the document and kindly made it available, although there are copyright issues when people do that, and it’s not really allowed.

Later, he sent me a link to a PDF file online. It’s a collection of Wills from the 19th century. Although I only found one dated after 1858, it was enough. I have now written my late character’s will-reading scene, and it will make for fun reading, I assure you. I’ll be back on Wednesday with another update on ‘Where There’s a Will.’

Meanwhile, don’t forget this promo is still running until the end of the month.

Where There’s a Will

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Hi everyone, and welcome to my Wednesday roundup of news. Today, I am very pleased to tell you I have made a good start on the next Delamere File mystery, and it’s titled, ‘Where There’s a Will.’

If you have been following the series, you will know that my two main characters are Jack and Will Merrit. Jack has featured as the lead of the first three books as he goes from being a hard-working London cabman to being a hard-working private investigator. He’s been trying to come to terms with his change in position, his sexuality, and his feelings towards the writer, Larkin Chase.

Book three will see his brother Will as the main character, although Jack is involved. Will has his own issues, though not around sexuality. He has a ‘condition of preciseness’ as he calls it, a kind of OCD, but not quite. It’s a fine line between madness and genius and Will is approaching that line, although he’s not mad.

Anyway… Where There’s a Will obviously relates to Will Merrit, but it also relates to the reading of a Will on a remote island in the Bristol Channel. The island is modelled on Lundy, though in the story it is Templar Island, and the brothers are charged to go there to be present at the reading of a will.

Why?

You will find out, but first I must find out, lol. I have written my synopsis on a small piece of paper, and here it is, the bottom one. Don’t look too closely as there’s an outside chance you might be able to read my scrawl and I don’t want to give you any spoilers.

(The top piece is the railway timetable from London to Bideford in October 1892)

So, I am already at chapter five, which is around 14,000 words into the story and so far, we have a quest, an unrequited love story theme, and a few laughs. We will soon be at the mystery stage before the threat and peril kick in.

In the meantime, I am pleased to say Follow the Van has been going well, and I have had a few private messages telling me how much readers have enjoyed it. Remember, if you can, reviews on Amazon really help because the more there are, the more coverage the books get.

I’ll be back on Saturday with news of another promo and some other information that might be of interest. Until then, have a good week!

Appledore, Devon, where chapter five is set. The yellow line is where the now defunct railway used to run.

Completely Random

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Usually, on a Wednesday, I put up a work-in-progress post to let you know how the current writing project is going. Today, I’m doing that and adding a couple of random images I found in one of my files. First…

Follow the Van

The draft is complete. I am working through the MS tidying things up and checking my facts and tie-ups. Neil has read it and didn’t find anything missing or wrong in the mystery, which is good news, and he says he particularly liked the ending which leads into book four. I’ll start writing that soon. All I have of book four is a title, ‘Where There’s a Will.’

Follow the Van is going off to be proofread within the next ten days or so, and Andjela has her brief for the cover. All being well, you will be able to get hold of your copy before the end of the month. I am aiming to release it on my birthday, 26th, but we’ll see.

Random Millbank Prison

As for the random photos, I downloaded them a while ago because they show something that’s not there anymore. The place in question is Millbank Prison which used to stand where the Tate gallery now is, on the north bank of the Thames. The map pre-dates 1888, but I am not sure of its actual date. Sometime around the late 1850s or very early 1860s I’d say because the map shows the route of the proposed Lambeth Bridge, which was opened in 1862. The prison, the flower-shaped building, was closed in 1890, and in its place (along with other things) was built the National Gallery of British Art, now called the Tate.

If you read ‘Agents of the Truth’, you’ll be able to visit Millbank prison with Jimmy Wright and Dalston Blaze, as they visit there looking for clues to the whereabouts of a particularly evil character.

What’s fascinating about the other photo is that it is an aerial shot taken before 1897, because the building was no longer there by then. 1897 happens to be the year Dracula was published, and one year after my grandmother was born. It still fascinates me that until I was in my early 30s, I knew and talked to a woman born during the reign of Queen Vicotria. If only I’d thought to ask questions…

Anyway, that’s enough random rambling. I must get back to my editing, so I have this next book ready for you by the end of the month.