Tag: Constance

My Writing Year – 2024

On By TomIn Achievement, author honesty, author ideas, collections, editing, General, Insight, Novel, paperback, Promotion, reading, self-publishing, series, Short Stories, thriller, work in progress, writing7 Comments

In the past few weeks, I’ve been in touch with fellow authors and bloggers I haven’t heard from in a long time. I drifted away from regular blogging several years ago, after spending a while receiving unexpected, but welcomed accolades for my ‘regular and interesting’ posts. I regret the loss of many international ‘friends’, but abandoning the twice-weekly articles and the many regular mutual visits left me more time for my first love–storytelling. Those recent contacts reminded me that my blogging days gave my brand a much-needed boost in the early years.

I didn’t produce an end of year blog in 2023, although I did publish Crusader. That one title felt like an accomplishment because, when only partially through writing the story, a secondary character often took centre stage. I was compelled to remove a sizeable chunk of the story to allow the primary character his own space.

The chapters I’d removed but saved from Crusader, became the foundation of my next story. Earlier this year, I published Constance, and I’m pleased to report that she has appealed to many readers. When I first attempted writing strong female characters I wasn’t sure if I’d be capable, but as their numbers increase, so has my confidence.

I set A Taste of Honey in the USA, aiming to attract more readers there, which worked. Knowing that my readers mainly hail from Europe, it was logical to set the sequel on this side of the pond. I’ve learned a lot since writing the first book, which has now been revised twice. Before going too far with the second part of Honey’s story, I reread the first to absorb the heroine’s mindset. By then, I felt comfortable with the continuing story, moving the character and the action to places more familiar to me.

I published Another Taste of Honey earlier this month as an eBook and it’s had good reviews so far. I’m hopeful that these will continue and the sequel will be as successful as the first part of the story. As with all of my work, I enjoyed living in the adventure and felt comfortable travelling from one location to another in Europe. Amsterdam, Cologne and Berlin all feature as Honey gives chase, and as you might expect, she continues to serve her own style of justice. The paperback will be available in early January 2025.

In November, I published my first anthology of short stories in four years.

Harriet: and Other Stories is a mixed-genre and mixed-theme collection. Five of the tales are sci-fi/fantasy/paranormal, and once again, there are no erotica stories included. Several of the stories were written as submissions for the quarterly Connections-eMagazine published by Melanie P. Smith.

I’ll post again in January to give a foretaste of my aims for next year. In the meantime, I hope you have a wonderful festive break, and thank you for your interest and any comments.

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Constance – an update

On By TomIn Achievement, author honesty, author ideas, beta readers, editing, General, Insight, killing your darlings, Novel, reading, self-publishing, thriller, work in progress, writing2 Comments

Constance may mean ‘steadfast’, but for me, she’s meant an abundance of work.

In the summer of 2021, I came up with the idea of Crusader (DS Jason Knight), and from the outset, the story flowed well. I introduced Constance (DC Constance Armitage), as his sidekick early on, and the partnership worked, so I was delighted. My joy was premature, because within a few months I realised that the partner was taking centre stage more than I’d intended.

As I wrote in my blog post, Killing Your Darlings, I was compelled to make a few changes to the story. Rather than waste what was effectively a story within a story, I removed three complete chapters and several other passages from the manuscript. I titled the file Constance, and put it aside.

After a year of hard work, including the usual literary surgery following beta reports, I published Crusader in March 2023.

I worked on other projects for a couple of weeks, just as I’d done between major edits. When I finally began to devote my time to Constance, I already had three chapters and the framework of two more. With a sense of relief, I charged on and the tale unfolded, but like Crusader, I felt there was something wrong. I was rewriting the same tale, but with Constance’s point of view.

I deleted whole chapters and created a framework to guide me before I started the rewrite. It was the single most important decision I’d made, apart from the one to perform the rewrite. Once again, the words flowed, but this time, I went off on a tangent with the first part of the story. It was August 2023 when I finally got my act together.

Constance is now ‘resting’ before I print the story and perform a major red pen edit. At present, the tale stands at 97, 000 words which I’d be happy to keep if all goes well with my revisions. For those interested in beta reading the manuscript for me, I aim to have it ready for mid-March.

I produced the original simple cover with the red background so that I had something to work on, and in the past couple of days I amended it to reflect the main part of the story. To get rapid, and trusted feedback, I posted my latest idea on the Indie Author Support and Discussion (IASD) group, on Facebook. It didn’t take long to find out that my efforts were off track.

I returned to the source I use for graphics and found a suitable model I’d never seen on there before. Not only did she look more like my idea of Constance, she had a weapon similar to one of those used by my character. I posted on Facebook with the IASD group again, and to my delight, friend and fellow author, Sharon Brownlie of Aspire Book Covers came to my rescue with a couple of tweaks. After reapplying the title and author name, I was satisfied with the cover.

Now, I’ll continue with other projects until my next full manuscript edit.

As always, comments are welcome, and thank you for reading.