Kill The King done and edited, safely in the hands of alpha readers (one of whom has already handed back notes and corrections), and I’m thrilled with how it turned out. If I got stuck in an elevator with an agent tomorrow, I could comfortably pitch them KTK as it currently stands. 115,300 words total.
In other news, you might notice that all ten chapters of Mark’s Bad Day are off the site. It was originally the intro to Wouldn’t Be Seen Dead (which takes place six months later), and my plan for this weekend was to put it on the Apple Books store, but having looked through it, it’s not up to par. It will be reworked entirely, perhaps as the first third of that entire novel. Perfect is the enemy of done, I know, but I can no longer comfortably put my name to something that had three instances of the word “slightly.” My standards are too high for that these days.
Not one to rest on my laurels, I’ll be getting to some short story ideas that got put on the back burner while editing KTK, the best of these to be shopped around.
Since last post, I’ve been reading the headlines – a millionaire CEO gets shot, wildfires scorch California – so I knew it was time to rewrite Kill The King, since the events mirror so many of its major themes.
It follows down-on-his-luck Vincent, who has a good thing going – committing petty crimes and breaking harmless laws for money – but when charismatic punk Jimmy recruits him to help kill the richest people in the city to save the needy before encroaching wildfires or boiling riots burn it all down. I wrote from the heart.
So far, I’ve been doing it side-by-side, writing in the fresh Word document on the left side of the screen and the previous draft open on the right. Every paragraph is tighter and smoother. Wise man say:
Formula: 2nd Draft = 1st Draft – 10%
I’m at page 132, at the exact same point where, in the first draft, it’s page 145. Not sure if that math maths out to be 10 per cent, but I’m happy with how it’s turning out. I’m also growing a book beard. I stopped shaving once I started the new draft of Kill The King, and won’t buzz it off until I’ve written those magic two words, three letters each: THE END. Maybe won’t shave even then; I kinda like it.
This does mean all my short stories are on hold.
But not other people’s short stories! Happy to announce that I’m now one of the new editors / readers for Story Unlikely, which has been a lot of fun, and is making me a better writer and editor.
Other news: I was featured in a tattoo exhibition at the local museum! It’s in Kingston and free all year, so go check me out. Bonus image below.
Hard at work on Kill The King, if only on weekends. Hit 13,000 words, so the big life-changing catalyst has occurred and the hero is on his way to figuring out if he wants any part of it. It’s quite a cathartic story to write, as they go. My heroes are among a larger group of lowlives tasked with bringing the heads of the richest people in the city, so that they might all enjoy a slice of the money, but things are never really quite as they seem in my books. To sum it up as a logline:
“On the verge of bankruptcy and starvation, Vincent, a down-on-his-luck warehouse worker pairs up with Jimmy, a freelance criminal, to take on a series of assassination contract; but when they realise the client might be setting them up to fail, they’ll have to work together to make a real difference before the city burns down around them.”
Me, Kill The King (working title)
I got a little over halfway through the first draft before it collapsed under me, not the first time that’s happened, but I feel I’ve levelled up as a writer since then, so I have high hopes to make this a decent read, or to at least write it to the end. Perhaps some snippets and sneak peeks next time, if I’m happy with them.
Weekends are for the novel, but weekdays are for short stories. Currently working on a horror short that takes place on the moon, though I’m a couple thousand words in and the protagonist hasn’t reached the moon yet, so I might have to edit it quite heavily. More on that soon.
On other other side of the page, I read Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut, and it effected me deeply. For those who haven’t had the pleasure, it’s about an American soldier in the Second World War, taken captive in Germany and held in as a prisoner of war in Dresden. He survives the firebombing there and goes on to be abducted by aliens, but that’s besides the point. What I loved most was that with EVERY SINGLE mention of death — whether it be a five-star general killed in combat or a single microbe being killed by soap — he follows that sentence with “So it goes.” I found that this made all death equal, dignified, and memorable. This alternate cover I found online (or is it just some art, I’m not sure) stuck with me:
And I’m not going to be in Germany for too much longer, so I thought, “why not?”At the lovely Erika & Kurt tattoo parlour in oldtown Dresden, I had the (agonising, excruciating) pleasure of getting this piece done, by Gustavo.
Still limping, two days later. Do tattoos get more difficult, the older you get?
I’ve added another two scenes to Feast that had been knocking on the back of my skull for attention, both of which actually improve the pacing and suspense. Stephen King said that each subsequent draft should be 90% the length of the draft before it, but sometimes you just realise something important was missing.
I won’t give a date that it’ll be ready, because my editor is incredibly thorough, and you can’t rush that kind of quality.
Instead I will be uploading the first two chapter of my long-suffering novel, Dirty Eyes. I’ve put a link to that page at the bottom of this post, but fair warning: it refused to format the dialogue properly, and I blame WordPress.
Matthew J Hampton 
