revisions

When I started work on MacLennan, it was intended to be a standalone story, but once underway, I recalled how many times readers had mentioned their favourite characters from my Beyond The Law (BTL) trilogy and spinoff tales, Codename: Nightshade, and Codename: Foxglove. I introduced one person to spice up a few scenes, and as these things do, it led to bringing in someone else from the vigilante team, and the new retribution story took on a life of its own.

As I do with all my work, when the initial tale was told, I saved it and left it aside for three weeks before printing it to revise as a hard copy. Armed with a trusty red pen, fuelled with copious amounts of coffee, and with classical music in the background, I deleted, inserted, and amended from the first page to the last. It took four days, which was no surprise, and then I saved it and left it alone again. During the ‘rest’ periods for a manuscript, to avoid being drawn into the story, if an idea comes to mind, I make a brief note at the end of my story info file.

Like many authors, I also edit as I write, and might occasionally spend an entire day on three or four chapters, chopping and changing imagery, dialogue and narrative until the flow feels right. Editing, ‘on the hoof’ isn’t the way to produce the best work, but it goes some way to creating a good foundation.

Due to always having more than one Work in Progress, I find it easy, rather than frustrating, to leave a manuscript aside. During the year I spent on the initial draft, I took a short break from MacLennan more than once and worked on something else.

It was only after sending the story to beta readers that I revisited the cover and decided to rename the tale Codename: MacLennan. I felt that there was so much involvement by my original vigilante team that it was appropriate to make this story another spinoff from the BTL trilogy.

Codename: MacLennan is scheduled to be published by the end of March 2026.

A by-product of this new story is yet another spinoff in the form of Codename: Larkspur, which I will start work on in April of this year.

I sincerely thank my regular readers for taking an interest and supporting my brand. If you’re new to my writing, I hope you’ll soon become one of my valued readers. Thank you for checking out my blog.

In the next few days I’ll be reading / reviewing which will take me to a new month.

As this year got underway I made a list of ten targets, so I thought with one third of the year out of the way I’d revisit my list to check progress. As I hit 2016 the five titles above were at various stages of completion.

1. Publication of A Life of Choice: Part One – job done and, now has reviews.

2. Production of Codename: Koki by Malcolm (Mali) Beadle – a detailed critique / suggested edits which took a couple of weeks. Manuscript is now back with Mali being redrafted.

3. Revision of my present novels – Ten Days in Panama – job done and, now appearing on Amazon categorised under Romance.

4. Publication of A Time for Courage: and other military stories – job done.

5. Produce artwork to accompany Whisper Wood, my submission for the IASD Children’s anthology – job done.

What else is going on?

Since January, apart from my personal workload and, working on Mali’s book, for fellow authors I’ve beta read three short stories and, two novels.

A Life of Choice: Part Two is in the final stages. I’ve heard from one beta reader and, in the next couple of days I’ll hear from the other, who is one of our IASD authors. I’ve printed the manuscript and, by the coming weekend I’ll be performing a red-pen edit, line by line.

No music and, no interruptions.
As usual it will be me, the manuscript, the red pen, my perpetual diary, character profiles, cast of characters, a plentiful supply of black coffee and, a notepad for worries, queries and, thoughts.

Did I mention I’ve set up two more pages on Facebook?

I set them up without any grandstanding to see if anybody would come across them and, I’m delighted to report I’ve got a couple of likes by IASD members and it’s much appreciated. I’d noticed several authors had set up pages for individual novels, but I decided to go with my writing categories. I now have:

Tom Benson – Writer

Tom Benson – Short Stories

Tom Benson – Poetry

Tom Benson – Erotica

I look at extra Facebook pages as a passive marketing tool. I may not produce many regular entries on them, but they’ll add to my online presence. I felt I needed to demonstrate diversity by not using a single page with disparate genre spread throughout.

As ever, I’ve got projects listed in my Work in Progress section. Some of these ideas have been planned for a while, but now I’ve added a new and, for me, exciting project. If you want to know what it is, you’ll have to look for the clue.

One of my latest projects is Temptation: and other stories. It will be another collection of short stories, but with an open theme.

I’ve now decided the Beyond The Law series will end as a trilogy. The original idea was intended as a single story. I like to think of it as my signature style and, I don’t want the stories to become formulaic. The original tale is re-titled as Beyond The Law: Formation, the second is Beyond The Law: Retribution and, the final title will be Beyond The Law: Consequences. A lot of background material has been written and, the story will start taking shape in the summer.

Following the successful conversion of Ten Days in Panama to the Romance genre, I am intending to perform a similar conversion with Amsterdam Calling. Once again, there will be little change to the storyline, but I know where it needs to be adjusted.

I’ve now made inroads into my two short stories for IASD anthologies. For the Indies for Charity anthology my story will be Taken for a Ride. My story for the Horror anthology will be Dark Places.

I’ve got a bit of reading, reviewing and, writing to do guys, so if you’ll excuse me … oh, and, thank you for dropping by. It is much appreciated.

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