Serendipity

I’ve been struggling of late.
Not with DYED IN THE WOOL, Cullen book four – that’s just ready to get line edited and proofed. Should be out in June.
And not with NAIL IN THE COFFIN, my first non-Cullen book – I’ve written half of it already and it’s going really well. Should be out in July, would you believe…
What I’ve been struggling with has been the plot of SPANNER IN THE WORKS, Cullen book five. I’ve got a specific theme I want to write about (it’s been set up in FIRE and DYED) but I’ve really struggled with the actual case. I’m wary of repeating myself and I don’t want to get too formulaic (or repeat mistakes that other writers have made) and there’s a danger that SPANNER just becomes DYED IN THE WOOL part 2, which I want to avoid.
Anyway, we were having a big clear out of cupboards at the weekend and came across a load of old notebooks, from the time before I started using Evernote… There was a load of rubbish in there – half-finished ideas, outlines for abandoned half-finished ideas – but I did find a few pages of notes that got me interested.
The notes were ideas based on redrafting my first ever novel – don’t worry, you’ll never see it – but they clicked with an idea I’d had for a future Cullen novel. As I looked through them – and I typed them into Evernote – I realised that it could work with the theme I’d got for book five. Since then, I’ve been thinking it through and it definitely works. Very spooky.
So be relieved that you’ve got (at least) another two Cullen books to come after DYED IN THE WOOL…
— Ed