So, I belatedly started writing my second book around six weeks ago. I published my first book, Flying Ant Day in May last year. If you want to know how that went sales wise etc I’m going to do a blog on that soon, but I am happy with it and it still stands as the proudest creative endeavour of my life!
I would have liked to have started my next book earlier, but to be honest, having a baby at home totally took it out of me. It was difficult to find the time, and when I did, I was too tired. So I changed my approach. Went I wrote Flying Ant Day, I would sit down for an hour at a time and write, sometimes more. Now, I don’t have that luxury, I snatch the time when I can. Ten minutes here, twenty minutes there, an hour here if possible. It was the correct thing to do. I’ve written 16,000 words in the last six weeks. I never wrote that fast when I was working on Flying Ant Day. Also, this is a much rougher first draft than I did then. I’m not going back and reviewing the chapter, it’s boom, done and onto the next one. I know it will need a lot of work on the second draft, but I just want that first draft down in all its ragged glory.
It’s not a sequel to Flying Ant Day, but I will write that next. This book is a very different beast, it’s shorter – I expect it to be around 65-70,000 words compared to Flying Ant Days 89,000. It’s written in the present tense, which is something I toyed with but decided against with Flying Ant Day, and has more humour in it. Genre wise I’d say it’s a suspense thriller, though not as out-and-out action thriller as Flying Ant Day.
What’s it about you’re probably wondering? Well, I don’t want to give too much away, but it’s the story of two people whose lives become entwined in a surprise way.
Kurt, who is in charge of a lottery syndicate at work, and superstitiously buys the ticket at a newsagent every week using the same numbers. Except this week he doesn’t buy the tickets, and the numbers come up…
Then there’s Rachel, who is married to the Home Secretary, and the couple are hiding a secret (or two) which may be about to be exposed…
There are the requisite twists and turns, subplots etc which hopefully make it an exciting read.
I’ll keep you posted on my progress and when I’m on the lookout for beta readers.