Sorry, I know it’s been a while, just been really busy and never found the time to do this.

#Music

Here’s some music, which is currently playing. Not new but not old.

Awake by Tycho, from the album of the same name. I think their first two records are amazing, blending electronic music with live instruments with a real snazzy poppy feel to it. They started adding vocals and became a bit blander later, sadly. Anyway, hope you enjoy!

#Last Few Weeks

It’s been head down with FALSE DAWN, the second Shunty story. It’s currently sitting at 50,286 words, which is roughly half a Marshall, so it’ll be half the price. There are spoilers below, so be warned - I’ve tagged them.

This book was done as an experiment to improve my writing method. I previously would sketch out a detailed outline, on cards (or the electronic equivalent), which could sometimes run to 22,000 words (the first Marshall book) or 35,000 (a secret book I haven’t announced). And I’d still get into problems with them, usually around the end of the book, as I was spending too much time in the wood and didn’t notice all the trees. Or too much time in the trees and didn’t notice I was in a wood. Not sure which. Anyway, I’d massage early chapters and sometimes the flow at the end was rubbish, so I’d have to stop and think it though. And then when I was writing and editing, so much of my focus would be on the story stuff that the line-level writing would need another pass or two.

So, I’d heard from another writer who writes his books as a screenplay first and thought I’d try that on something easily contained to see how it would work for a full-length Marshall book. And that’s this. Screenwriting is something I’ve wanted to write and my style has been consciously in that vein – you could take any of, say, the Marshall books and easily convert that to a shootable screenplay. Whether anyone would is another matter!

Partly. Because I’ve written rather a lot of books in the mystery genre of police procedurals and wanted to do something a wee bit different, hence

(SPOILERS)

putting Shunty in uniform, something he’s never been. It was supposed to be his first day, but I did that with FALSE START, so it evolved. And hopefully he has too. He’s not the same green-around-the-gills loveable numpty as in that; his brief stint has let him develop. And writing a story where the bit prologue bit happens near the middle was something that interested me too – how to make the first chunk interesting. And hopefully I’ve captured the chaos of a uniform backshift. And writing about Edinburgh again... Man, I’ve missed it...

(SPOILERS OVER)

The editing process was a lot easier as it happened on a 22,000 word screenplay, which is a linear story that’s easy to parse and process, but significantly easy to change without rich descriptions ballsing everything up! The editing of the novel would’ve been even easier had either I read an edit note more clearly or my editor expressed it more clearly. I still think I’m right, but I think where we got to with it makes the story much stronger.

So, that’s FALSE DAWN and hopefully you’ll enjoy it when it comes out. It was really fun to write and it’s given me a new level of enthusiasm for future books. And I really love the characters here. Maybe some will come back in future.

#This Week

This week is a case of head down with a final read edit of FALSE DAWN before it goes off for a copy edit. As I said above, the dev editing process has been largely trivial (a day’s work rather than five) because editing the screenplay was so much more efficient.

Oh, and FALSE DAWN is on preorder – no description because SPOILERS:

#Questions

I got a question last time around from a reader:

“Thanks for the update but I do have one question - why didn’t you enjoy writing the 6th Marshall book? Is it just you or do some authors actually not like writing some of their books. That fact never occurred to me.”

The main factor was the hay fever medication I was on at the time, which made me feel a bit zombie-like. The alternative was bleeding out of my nose constantly! And it was quite stop start, as I was busy with a fair amount of travel at the time, so once I'd settle into a groove it was soon disrupted again. There were some things about the book I found tricky to get right, which made me worry it was rubbish, but to be honest when I got edits and read it back, it was fine.

I think there's a thing with us authors where the circumstances surrounding writing a book can influence how you feel about it, certainly negatively, which makes you think it's a bad book. A lot of people I know talk about what they think as their worst book as the one that actually sells the most or wins a prize (or is shortlisted) etc. And the converse can be true too, where what you think is the best isn't the most successful...

We're capricious beasts! It's why we have editors!

But that painful process is what motivated me to do the screenplay version – the proof will be in THIS WORLD OF SORROW, the seventh Marshall which I’ll be starting in a couple of weeks, and sod it, I am definitely going to do the eighth straight away. Maybe even the ninth. Just need titles for them because I have got stories for both of them! And the story for the seventh has changed to something else and will be set in Hawick – so if you’re from there or live there, I’ll be looking for stories...

Anyone else got a question? I’ll happily answer most of them!

#Stuff

Been watching a few films recently. Mostly in the Alien “franchise”. I have a theory that only the first two in what is termed a franchise are any good (I’d exclude Bond, MCU and Star Wars as they were always intended as big things). The Predator franchise had two great films at the start, then some absolute muck including the two crossovers with Aliens, but Prey from a couple of years ago was fantastic and a return to the roots. With Aliens, the recent Alien: Romulus was its Prey, returning to the roots of the first two great films (Aliens is one of the best films ever IMHO) and ignoring a lot of the stupid bilge since (though I quite like Promotheus, but Ridley Scott seems to have confused Alien and Blade Runner in its sequel). Highly recommend it!

And I started playing Astro Bot on the PS5, which is going to be one of my favourite games ever. It’s got all the joy of a Nintendo Mario game without the frustrations.

Anyway, I’ll try and do this more regularly again, sorry!

Cheers,
Ed