I’m struggling to get the next series book out. It’s down to the passage of time. Basically Watcher on the Water was one of the first books I wrote and was always a bit of an outlier. A tale of the immediate post-apocalypse before most of the rest of the series had been written and with none of the familiar characters – at least in their ‘original’ form.
It also predated the prequels. And that has led to issues. A lot of the character development and background details which should have been reflected in Watcher simply hadn’t happened whilst I was writing it. Now I have multiple books that take place within the series in earlier times and… it’s tough to work those details in.
That’s not the big problem though.
The big problem is that my writing has developed down a certain path and the first third of Watcher has been rewritten about a dozen times at this point, each time with a slightly different slant to the story. This, after all, started off as a buddy story where two guys try to survive a disaster and argue over whether wrecking is okay.
One of those characters disappeared, then wrecking became the sine qua non of the remaining character, then the character splintered and had a back story which explained they were both less and more than they appeared, and all the while the world around them was changing around them so that the visitor who triggers the main sequence of the book is a substantially different person to who they were originally written as.
Then there’s the whole Satellite thing. I like that, it adds depth to what happened during the Catastrophe. It also needs a thin line through the rest of the book but at the moment is ladled on lavish style.
So. I’ve decided to rewrite from fresh, the first third anyway. It has too many variant story lines, character traits, running through it. Overcomplication is rife and I don’t enjoy reading it.
If I don’t, with all my background knowledge I can guarantee a reader won’t.
Back to square one, clean story with action and excitement, retaining the best of the various story lines and consistent with the rest of the series as it’s developed.
I’m not looking forward to reading a couple of the others…
Toodle pip! Drop John, out.
Ice Age in Scarlet 