thriller – Page 18

In July 2014 my author website went live. I had three novels to promote on there, plus two books of short stories and five books of poetry.

It was the first week in August 2014 when I first came up with the idea for my next story, so I made some simple notes in my trusty notebook.

What did I write as the basis for the new book?
Vigilante, young female, NYPD, trigger – family connection, short time scale, fast pace, outside influence.

Okay, so that wasn’t much to go on, but as any writer would agree; it was enough.

The mention of outside influence was essentially because I was asking for ideas from anybody to keep the story going after the first chapter. There wasn’t much of a response on the ideas side of things, but I did have suggestions from several people that I should go it alone to maintain my writer’s ‘voice’.

I gave myself an estimated publishing date of mid-December 2014.

Why so tight on time?
I know I feel more of an incentive, so work more efficiently when under pressure. I completed the first draft six weeks later.

It is now 16 weeks since I started and I’ve completed the fourth draft. I’ve just finished editing my latest printed copy of the manuscript and gone back to the screen to make my amendments – again.

For a couple of days, I’ll be working through the whole file to check punctuation, grammar and suchlike. One minor issue I’ve created for myself is that this novel is Americanized. The story, characters, and locations are American, so why would the spelling and phraseology be any different? I particularly want it to appeal to the people who live where the story is set.

The file will rest for a week before I complete final checks.
Towards the end of the first week of December I’ll print the manuscript and read it again.

Monday 8th December I’m aiming to publish my new creation, ‘A Taste of Honey’.

The first five chapters are now updated on my blog as a taster.
Thank you as always for being patient with my absence from the blogging community, and thank you for reading.
Any comments are welcome as always.

Okay, so things didn’t go exactly according to plan, but I’m happy with the result so far.

What was the plan?

My intention was to create a new character for a thriller, but invite input from anybody that wanted to put in ideas, for any aspect of the story. As with many things in life, it didn’t work out according to plan.

What went wrong?

I prepared and published an opening scene to try to inspire some ideas. Within a few days I had several contacts saying that folk liked the theory of it, and would like to take part. To cut a long story short, I got one concrete idea from somebody and a character name. I’ve used the character name, but the intention for the plot was too far off the mark. The only suggestion was good, but aimed at an international story. The research would have taken me until this time next year.

What went right?

I had my intro and a skeleton of a synopsis, but after several days of no feedback I set about inventing some more characters and started writing. By the time I’d written the close of the first chapter I knew where I was going and I’d discovered the pace at which to move the story forward.

I had responses from four people (fellow writers), who suggested I should go my own way to maintain my ‘voice’ throughout the story. If nothing else inspired me, then that certainly did and to come from more than one person was incredible for my confidence.

Where are we now?

1. In a little over six weeks I’ve written the first draft of the entire novel.

2. The first five chapters appear in this blog, still only at first draft. I have a lot of work to do.

3. I’ve already decided that there will be a sequel and have a working title.

4. There is a high possibility that in the sequel, certain characters from this new story will intermesh with the characters of the sequel to Beyond The Law.

5. I’m now leaving A Taste of Honey to settle for two weeks while I work on other projects, and then in mid-October I plan to start work on the second draft.

Is there a proposed publication date?

If I can work to my usual schedule and everything falls into place – mid-December 2014.

On that happy note, I’m now off to spend some time on the other novel that I have under construction, A Life of Choice.

Thank you for dropping by.

Tag: thriller

A Taste of Honey – an update