I haven’t written a
post for a while—fourteen months, in fact—and I put that down to a couple of
things.
First, the way I was
writing my books. From my debut thriller
Gray Justice to my eighth book, Run and Hide (due out later this year), I would
start with the seed of an idea and run with it.
At the very most I would plot out the next two or three chapters, but
after that I would just write by the seat of my pants. All went well for the
first seven attempts, but when it came to Run and Hide—centred around a new
character, a female CIA assassin forced to go rogue—nothing seemed to go
right. I painted myself into so many
corners that I went through the same thing most authors suffer from at one time
or another: self-doubt.
There were days when I
would wake up and dread opening the file and looking at the word count that
hadn’t changed in days. I would write
three sentences and immediately delete them, then stare at the page on and off
for hours, and finally call it a day.
Most nights I would lie awake worrying about how I was going to pay the
bills with no new book on the horizon, which made the next day even more
stressful.
I’d been working on
Run and Hide for thirteen months when I did what I should have done a long time
earlier. I took the family away to Gran
Canaria for 23 days and completely forgot about writing. I sat in the sun, swam in the pool and
lounged on the beach (reading the Mechanic trilogy by Rob Ashman, which was
fantastic!). I took the girls to water
parks, we ate out every day, I spent a couple of nights watching football in
the pub, everything and anything but writing.
When I got home, I opened the manuscript and went from 20,000 words to
85,000 in ten weeks, and a lesson was learned.
I handed in Run and
Hide at the end of October 2017 and immediately began working on the sequel
only this time I worked differently. I
plotted out the gist of the story, then broke it down into individual scenes
then added more to make them complete chapter prompts, and once I had 35 scenes
in place, I began writing. That was the
best 48 days of my writing career to date!
I finished Seek and Destroy at the end of November and took a few weeks
off while I came up with my next idea.
I was planning to move
on to something completely new, but Eva Driscoll wouldn’t let me, so I
started working on the plot for her third adventure. Twenty days in, I’ve got over 20,000 words
down and it’s looking good. I hoping to
have it finished by May for an early 2019 release.
With the words now
flowing, I was able to take stock of my writing career and saw that something
was missing. I’ve been sitting on the
film and TV rights for years, and my foreign rights have been with my publisher
all that time. So far, only one book as
been translated into German and Spanish, while the rest gather virtual
dust. I needed to do something about
that.
I asked a
highly-successful author for advice regarding literary agents. Up until that point, I’d seen little need for
one. I’d negotiated my own contracts
with Thomas & Mercer, and over the last three years I’d made enough to pay
the bills and put a little aside for a rainy day. Still, I felt there was something holding my
career back. When my friend was good enough to introduce me
to Alice Saunders of Lucas Alexander Whitley (LAW), I was a little
nervous. Would my work be good
enough? Would I have enough potential to
interest one of the most respected agencies in the UK? I needn’t have worried. Alice made me feel at ease from the moment we
met, and she guided me through what they could offer me, as well as delving
deep into my own plans for the future.
When I left her London office an hour later, I floated back home to
Worthing and celebrated like it was all my birthdays and Christmases in one! I’m hoping to sign the contract this weekend,
and the future seems a lot rosier than it did six months ago. Alice has already given me some great advice,
and I’m really looking forward to working with her for a long time to come.
So, that’s what’s been
going on since my last post, and I’m hoping to share more good news over the
coming months.
Okay, back to writing…
