New updates

It's time again to attempt to restart the blog ... and this time around it will be for all my writing, including pen names.

Here goes....

October has been a good month so far, rattling along at over 2000 new words a day. Just this morning I finished my third Christmas book, titled Coming Home to Me this Christmas, which came in at 53,000 words and took just 34 days to draft. Usually first draft to publication takes ages but getting this out before Christmas is obviously massively important. The cover has already been commissioned and I'll be sending it off for editing in the next few days.

Now that's out of the way, I'm going to try to push the fifth Jack Benton book (The Angler's Tale) along a little. These books exist in the background, written in first draft on my phone, a few minutes every day. I've had some reviewer criticism of this method - usual snarking bullshit ("he says its written on a phone and you can tell"), but it keeps the tone consistent and almost means the plots get teased out rather than forced.

Moving forward, I'll also be getting to the edits for the fourth Benjamin Forrest - Curse of the Miscreants. The editor has finished part one and is working on part 2. Again, hopefully out by Christmas.

As always when a book gets finished I'm basking in the finished-book glow, where you feel suddenly like you have all the free time in the world (probably why I'm writing this...!), but I like to get back to drafting as soon as I can, because that's what makes me really happy.

And that's about it for today. Keep checking in for more updates. I'll do my best....