Bad news, I’m afraid – FIRE IN THE BLOOD is going to be delayed (at least) two weeks and will come out 02-Feb-13 instead of 19-Jan-13.
Apologies for this, but I think it’s necessary. Bear in mind that I have really scrunched this down – I planned, wrote and edited a full length novel in six weeks – and the delay is that I stupidly didn’t allow the required amount of time for my editors to like edit the book (I’m not this bad at planning at work, but then I control everything). The first two books have suffered from a bit of “wet ink” when published and had typos and other editing errors which I fixed after the fact. I’m not promising perfection, but it will be significantly better than the previous books (and will set the standard for future books). There’s nothing wrong with the book, by the way – one of the two editors said that it’s the best CULLEN yet. The artwork for FIRE is good to go and I’ll post it in the next wee while.
One thing to remember is that I’m a wee guy (well, not so wee) doing this on my own, with some astounding help. Ian Rankin’s excellent STANDING IN ANOTHER MAN’S GRAVE, for instance, was finalised in early July but wasn’t published until November. I’m doing things a bit quicker and fresher with being an indie – I can literally write something and publish it. I’ve never been a perfectionist but I want to make sure that I get my books sufficiently polished to stand up to the big boys.
The fourth CULLEN – DYED IN THE WOOL – is pretty much ready to go, and I will actually start writing it on Monday (or maybe over the weekend, who knows). It’s all plotted out, but probably needs to be reviewed and refined before I set hand to keyboard. It’s good and builds on the first three (especially the expanded FIRE IN THE BLOOD) and leads the over-riding story I’ve weaved so far to a particular point. I’ve started the plotting for book five – now called SPANNER IN THE WORKS – and I’m trying to line up a factory process here, where I’ve got three books on the go at any one time in various stages of the process – plotting, writing and editing. Tricky, but it’s what I want to achieve this year.
In other news, I’ve just finished the plotting for what will be the fifth published ED JAMES novel. It’s untitled, it has no connection to SCOTT CULLEN (not even a shared universe or anything like that) and it’s about vampires. It’s not a horror, more of a thriller, and I am really chomping at the bit to write the bugger – but I’ve got DYED IN THE WOOL to get through first. It’s an idea that I’ve had kicking around for a year or so and sat in the dank, dark recesses of my Evernote notebooks until I took a drive from Haddington to Duns over the Newtonmass break and it sparked my interest in the idea again. In under two weeks, I’ve fleshed out an entire world and mythology and a completed plot.
I know this is such a horrendous cliche but I think that the primary reason that I’m so productive these days (aside from just committing to writing and getting down to it) is the new MacBook Air I bought in October as a reward for publishing DEVIL IN THE DETAIL. I’ve managed to go paperless – I used to use loads of notebooks and sheets of A3 to draw my ideas out and work through problems. Now, I’ve got a slew of Apps on the Mac that really help – Scapple and MindNode Pro for the ideas to plotting stage, Scrivener for the outlining, core writing and publishing, Evernote for storing research (which I’m getting better at) and Wunderlist for managing my To-Do list. To repeat the cliche – and I know that most of the apps are available in Windows in some form or another – but those apps (and particularly those versions – e.g. the Scrivener OSX app is a version higher than Windows and you can tell) and Scapple isn’t available elsewhere – are really helping me get a solid workflow together.
So, yeah, sorry about the delay – I’ll post updates weekly on a Friday to let you know how FIRE is progressing – but you’ll get another three books out of me this year (at least). And a huge thanks to Pat and C for doing the editing – unsung heroines but really essential to what I do!
— Ed
Buy GHOST IN THE MACHINE (Scott Cullen book one) –
UK Kindle 77p – http://amzn.to/Ih2ros
US Kindle 99c – http://amzn.to/IzknfQ
other channels available – also Scott Cullen book two DEVIL IN THE DETAIL is out now – http://edjamesauthor.com/books/