It’s almost September. Wow. Where is this year going?

I was halfway to the bank this morning before I remembered it was a bank holiday. Whoops. Bank holidays work weirdly up here – there’s a Scottish system. I think. It could be local bank holidays that are defined by council area, so you might have a different one in Fife and in Dundee. It always seemed weird when I had a day job that we had UK holidays but people with partners who were, say, teachers had the “local” ones.

Well, that’s a diversion!

Last week

I’m into the guts of Fenchurch 9 just now and crossed over 40,000 words at some point today. Got through some mucky exposition today, which will be the main focus of the book – hopefully I’ve explained that well enough for anyone to follow. The book’s hanging together really nicely now, I think, and is the most fun I’ve had writing a Fenchurch book since… Well, I’ve actually hated doing most of them. I think maybe A HILL TO DIE ON was the first one I enjoyed writing. Actually, book 5, KILL WITH KINDNESS was a good one to do, had a lot of satisfying research pay off in that one.

What a weird thing. I think most writers hate the process of writing. The getting through the words. Or at least pretend to hate or say they hate. But it’s like running a marathon (I imagine) where the sense of completion is incredible. Having finished writing a book is a great feeling. Knowing you’ve put everything into it. But the process of putting words down one after the other until you’ve got some something big enough can feel overwhelming at times. But we get through it!

This week

The main focus, as with any first draft, is to just get through it day-by-day. Nothing much on this week, but not a quiet one. So it’s ploughing through each day’s work and hoping the whole thing hangs together in the end. I’m enjoying Funky Si’s character arc in this one. I hope the full-length read is less painful than in previous books as I’ve been fixing a LOT as I go. I know this is the this week section, but I’ve spent at least two days in the last week fixing big flow issues in scenes and between chapters. The narrative logic is much more solid now and I think it’s working well. So the book’s shaping up nicely.

I keep getting asked about whether there’ll be another Dodds book. I think the answer’s looking a resounding AYE. So far!

Anyway, I had a fun Saturday night with Bessi where we stayed over with some friends… who had a dog. Pretty big deal for her as she started out a growling confused mess and ended up like this:

That’s another dog in the same room as her, both absolutely sparked out. She was a brave girl the next day too, walking with her doggie cousin, Milo, my brother’s cockerpoo (I think, he’s a curly spaniel).

Have a great week.

Cheers,
Ed

source https://edjames.substack.com/p/inside-eds-head-they-call-them-the