Quick one today.

I’m hard at work on the novel, which I feel like I’m writing in collaboration with Drunk-Matt. Some weekends he’ll give me 10 pages of compelling prose, others he’ll hyperfixate on fact-checking and leave me with 700 words of crap that I have to rewrite. I’ve all but booted him from the project, which my liver and waistline are thanking me for.

Speaking of wordcounts, I abandoned that exercise. I now know that I have 54,674 words (138 pages) and I’m well into act three.

Last chapter had some brutality in there, hope I haven’t gone too far.

Just re-read On Writing by Stephen King, I’m going to start making that an annual tradition. Can’t recommend it enough if you’re a writer, or any kind of creative, or just like his work.

Also breezed through Devil’s Advocate by Steve Cavanagh, the latest in his series on the con-man-turned-lawyer Eddie Flynn, good stuff.

Will post a snippet of The House Always Wins when I’m happy with it. For now, I’m back to the keyboard with a tall glass of water.

Like a brutally difficult video game, I keep putting Kill The King away, swearing I need some space from it, but then I pick it right back up again. 

The struggle continues. Kill The King is at 45,657 words and I’m not even halfway done.
Perfectly happy with the quality of it so far, but there needs to be more hours in the day in which to write.

Woohoo, I’m 33!

Anyway, quick update.
I was plotting and planning and shaping Kill The King when I reflected on how different it is to the actual process of writing, just as different as the after-work.

Planning – giving the story shape and direction, including bits you want to see happen, major character moments, twists and reveals. A bit exhausting, a night of this often ends with saying “screw it, I’ll figure that out when I get there.”

Writing – endless nights beating the snot out of a keyboard, sipping wine and nodding along to the perfect song. I make no bones about this being my favourite part.

Consequences – editing, fixing, showing to others, getting it ready to share with agents and publishers. Clearly the part I’m worst at.

SO I had the bright idea of doing the planning stage not just for this next book, but for two more. The House Always Wins is now all plotted out and ready for a romantic evening with me and a bottle of wine, and Bodycount is well on its way as well. A lot more research into serial killers will have to be undertaken before that last one is completely fleshed out, but I’m a lot closer than I was.

Broke ground on Kill The King last night, before being gifted an awesome Alphonse Mucha poster and an immersion blender that I will be using to make hot sauce.

Stay safe out there everyone, love you all.

March is here! My birth month.

Not much to add, still plugging away at Kill The King, and have made a lot of progress. It’s turned out to be a much larger-scale and more complex book than I’d anticipated, but I’m very excited about what I’ve got so far. I broke ground on the first scene (which probably won’t end up being the first scene) and spat out 800+ words. 

What little I can reveal:

• Takes place chronologically five months after Wouldn’t Be Seen Dead, and two years before Dirty Eyes.
• We will see many characters return, and witness how some hinted-at events actually transpired.
• About on par with Dirty Eyes in terms of scale and set-pieces.
• All operatives in the city are set the same task and made to work together, which of course sets many of them at odds.

I’m at the stage I like to call the Scene Breakdown, where I take the thousands of words of structured plot and divide it into distinct scenes with Beginnings and Ends and Beats Which Must Be Hit. I want to have the first draft done by winter, so I can give Dirty Eyes another draft and hopefully start showing it to literary agents.

If anyone knows of any such agents looking for a thriller writer, let me know.

PS: also been having ideas for a fantasy book, and a vampire book (which is perhaps also in our fair city of Dirty Eyes?)

What a fucking year.

This time last year I had just put Feast up for free to download, and have since received half a dozen rejection letters from agents, each citing that they don’t represent novellas. Feeling that it is cursed by its size, I’ve put that away for now until I either meet the right agent or revisit it to make it shorter or expanded to a full novel.

I finished Wouldn’t Be Seen Dead; 88,888 words of violence and intrigue that I’m exceedingly proud of. That’s in need of another draft, but not yet. I’m not far enough away from it yet to come back to it with an unbiased eye.

Dirty Eyes is staying exactly where it is until I can afford Angela Slater’s fees.

The House Always Wins is, at this point, far too bleak and heartbreaking to be written. A silver lining or entirely different ending needs to be discovered before I can dive into that, but will still be the lowest life and the highest tech I’ve ever written.

Instead, I will be working on my most exciting project, Kill The King. It comes directly after Wouldn’t Be Seen Dead (chronologically about six months after) and will focus on two pairs of professionals navigating a very different professional landscape – often at odds with each other – against the backdrop of raging fires and riots.

Writing aside, it’s actually been a great year. I’m safe, prosperous, loved, happy, and optimistic. Hope everyone has a great 2021, look after each other. Love you all.

Matt

I’ll keep this brief, as I’m currently fighting off an infection (not Rona) and am low on energy.

Friday last I got home from work, poured a glass of wine, and sat down at about 8.30pm to take a crack at the lengthy climax to Wouldn’t Be Seen Dead Part 2, aka The Spikes Gang. Eight hours, two bottles of wine, and five thousand words later — at 4.30am on Saturday — I finally wrote “THE END.”

It needs a lot of polish, it needs some corrections, it badly needs another draft. But it’s done.

The Lost Girl topped out at 34,971 words, and The Spikes Gang ended at 51,956 words, bringing the entire first draft of Wouldn’t Be Seen Dead to a total of 86,927 words. That’s a lot of intrigue, dialogue, violence, introspection, and thrills.

I’m going to give myself a couple more days to finish this course of antibiotics, then start the next draft of The Spikes Gang before working to combine it all and start perhaps shopping it around to agents.

Stay safe and happy, one and all.

Still hard at work on Wouldn’t Be Seen Dead Part Two: The Spikes.
Just a hair shy of 30,000 words, and some chapters I’m extremely proud of. Weekend last was an amazingly productive night, 3,200 words in a single sitting. The more challenging subject matter and complex situations are making a nice change of pace.

Listening to a lot of Stephen King audiobooks, been powering through the Dark Tower series for the last few months. I wonder how much that might be influencing my writing style – prose, if anything – and will be interested to see how the second draft goes while I’m indulging in thrillers again.

Might even put Part Two on here for free, like I did with Part One: Lost Girl, or maybe just a few chapters.

Also firing off Feast to publishers and agents, but having trouble finding any that take novella-length works.