Having finally polished Watcher on the Water into something I can live with, I’m now moving on to the next book in the series.
In a break from tradition, it’s a direct follow up to Watcher, which (if you’ve read it) ends with the main characters departing the Port, where a battle is going on between the Union and the Witches who Alyson was trying to contact for a way out of Union space without having to rely on a boat (and the Watcher himself.
As is traditional, upon looking at this one I’ve noticed two things.
- Former me was a big fan of writing 75k words of a novel whilst also leaving some chapters as ‘to be completed laters’. This means that, having addressed point 2, I think we’re heading for a 95 to 100k book.
- Former me also kept threading new story lines into the story without clearing up the old ones. I’m about six chapters into the editing and goodness me but there’s a car crash of ideas going on in the first few chapters. Basic motivation swerves around wildly as the new plot lines slap hard against the existing ones and leave the main character appearing to be more than a little schizophrenic.
- I’ve not actually got a final title yet. Witch on the Run was a runner (ha ha) but I’m definitely not settled on that – it’s a bit Carry On film and the book’s somewhere between Watcher and Master in tone – it’s lighter than Watcher which is almost entirely devoid of humour, whilst the main character doesn’t suffer from Albie’s near complete lack of self awareness that added a lot of the humour to Master’s interaction with the world.
- Cover, cover where’s the cover?
Yes, I intended there to be three paragraphs. It’s an in joke about trying to cutback this novel into a publishable shape when it keeps adding things.
And adding things.
And adding things, but then veering off and…
You get the idea.
Aim is to get the editing finished this week. My trip back to Alaska with the cats is hopefully going to be mid next month and there’s still clearing up to do here but editing plus work is a nice contrast to stacking books and driving them up (at £100 per tank of petrol, thanks Putin), to my storage unit.
Lot of dead mice in that place. I hope they had successful and mouse–filled lives.
Oh well, back to the grind.
Toodle pip.
Ice Age in Scarlet 