It has been quite some time since I last wrote a blog piece for you. If I remember correctly I was threatening to have my new WordPress blog up and running. Sadly that is yet to happen, fully. But what there is, is here. Welcome Thoughts by the Otter. Does anyone have experience in setting up a WordPress Site?

So, what have I been doing with my time?

Apart from working for NHS, which has been busy and continues to be very challenging for our little team, I have been concentrating all my writing efforts on my debut novel ‘Beasting Dartmoor’

As I wrote towards the end of last year, I have finished the first draft of the book. I put it aside for a while and concentrated on my second book ‘The Mince Pie Murders. 

At the start of the year, I recommenced work on ‘Beasting’ while at the same time writing ‘Mince Pies’. To get ‘Beasting along further, I parked Mince Pies and got on with the Edit/Rewrite. 

I can now reveal that the rewrite is very nearly complete (yes, I know, get on with it man and stop this blogging lark). It is within a couple of days of finishing.

More importantly, this morning, Friday, I sent off the Prologue and the first three chapters off to my editor, Jenny. Jenny, along with others has been the inspiration for me to finish this book. She ran the Novel in a Year workshops I attended last year. She has a couple of her former students’ novels to edit, hence I’m third in the queue. It is the way with editors that will take a few chapters of the work to estimate the level of editing that may be required. Jenny can have a look at my chapters and give me a hint of what to look at before I send in the whole manuscript in a couple of months. I will do a line edit as I did with what I have sent so far. That will keep me occupied, alongside getting back to ‘Mince Pies’.

It’s all very daunting but exciting at the same time. I was saying the same to the Crime Writer, Sarah Pearse, from Wellswood, Torquay, who came to Honiton Library the other evening, Both she and her husband we very interested in my work in progress and offered any help with social media that I think could help.

Sarah’s debut novel ‘Sanatorium’ was picked up by Penguin and she made it on to Reece Witherspoon Book Club in the US. The rights to screenplay have been taken up by Apple TV and they are looking to make it into a series. It is with a screenwriter currently. Exciting times for her and one to keep a lookout for too.

That’s just two examples of how supportive writers are to each other. Most Sunday afternoons, I sit down and have an hour writing with William Gallagher and other members of his 58Keys Patreon Two Biscuit Tier group. They couldn’t be more supportive of me, in truth we are wildly supportive of the whole group.

I missed yet another meeting of Ottery Writers this week, sadly some of my shifts haven’t matched up to being able to attend as much as would like to, but they continue to be very supportive of my work as well.

For those who have known me for more than several years, will know that despite serving 25 years in the Royal Marines Band, I never adorned myself with tattoos. That is, despite walking past ‘Painless Jeff’s ‘ in Deal every time I went ashore and came back the same way more than slightly worse the wear, and spending time in the world-famous ‘Pinkies’ tattoo shop in Hong Kong in the late ’80s. 

Two weeks ago, after Kathy had booked us both an appointment, we went to Rivers of Ink in Ottery St. Mary. There the lovely and extremely talented artist, Lia tattooed simply the best artwork on the inside of my left forearm, as can be seen in the thumbnail to this post. I can’t tell you how much I love it and yes I’m already thinking about what I want on the other arm. And no, I’m not considering having a piercing – or am I?

There we are, the first blog in a while, I hope you have enjoyed it. I will endeavour to start blogging regularly once again, especially as now my book is getting ever nearer to fruition. I do intend, if it’s good enough, to submit it to publishers. I am fully prepared and expecting rejection letters, as all writers do, it’s part of the job description. Whichever way we get into print and or ebook, expect to see a lot of marketing from me in the future.

Once again, thanks for reading, and have a good week ahead. Keep writing.

A Tail Of Two Apps

I have two apps that help me manage my writing week. OmniFocus is my to-do app, but OmniOutliner has been keeping me going in the latter part of this week.

This week has been a good writing week, and I’m nearly finished editing/rewriting my novel. It sounds like a broken record at the moment; I have been predicting the finish of the rewrite for the last few months. The pressure was taken off a bit with the previous week’s news that Jenny, who is editing for me, is swapped with work and won’t get to my edit for another month. She has the first three chapters, and I look forward to hearing from her about those.

I did come up with a problem on Thursday evening. I had been whizzing along with the edit and planning for the next few days. I had a read through the rest of the chapter that I was working on and into the next one, and to be honest, it was pants. The story was there, but it wasn’t entirely flowing as I figured it should do. In my early Friday morning prework writing session, I pondered what to do with it. It is the first time I have considered chucking away huge pieces of it while writing this book. 

OmniOutliner to rescue.

Friday’s lunchtime writing session turned into an outlining session.  I now have a better plan to rewrite the last few chapters. I aim to get back on track over this weekend.

My first draft of the novel was just over 64k words, and the rewrite is currently at just over 74k. I estimate that there are another three to five thousand words to go into it yet. If I have the outline correct now, that is about four or five hours of writing, and that’s where OmniFocus will come in. 

What next?

I need to get the book finished and ready for the editor. I have a lot of people eager for it to be published. I’m not too sure how long that will be, but there is still plenty of work to be done. How am I going to publish it? Do I attempt to find a publisher? Will I need an agent? These are all questions that need to be answered over the next few weeks, with plenty of research to be done, too.

As for writing, I have plenty to get on with. I have another novel, which currently stands at just under 20k words. I would like this novel to be available for Christmas 2025, so I would need it to be ready by spring next year. I would have to finish the first draft before the end of this year. I think that this story will run to about 50k words, and I believe that’s quite a feasible project.

I have an idea for a third book, but it is not quite in the planning stage. It is poised with a character standing with a severed head in a box. In all honesty, I have a notebook with a whole host of ideas. I have plenty to keep me writing, and there are always sequels to the first two novels to write. I feel that the second novel could run into a few sequels. 

That was this week. I hope that you are enjoying the new platform. It will change as I get used to it more. I am still looking for somebody to help me with a WordPress site.

Three Things This Week

At the end of the week, I usually ‘Fessing Up’ about the amount of productive writing I have achieved. This week was different, as I have virtually written nothing, although I have completed a lot with my novel. My MacBook has been nagging me about the latest Mac OS 15.1 Sequoia update. I’ll ‘fess up’ about how that went, and yesterday, a new piece of tech arrived. 

Those are the headlines. Let’s get into it, shall we?

This week has definitely not been a mega-writing one. This piece is the longest original writing I have done this week. So, what have I been up to?

Last Sunday, during my weekly Zoom writing hour with William Gallagher and the other 58Keys Patreon members, I finally finished the Edit/Rewrite/2nd Draft of ‘Beasting Dartmoor’. It came out at 79 thousand words and 43 chapters.

Before I send the whole novel to my editor, my next task is to complete a line edit to clear away a typo and eliminate some formatting problems. It should then be ready for the next stage. I picked up a dirty big plot hole in the chapters I have gone through so far. I swiftly corrected that problem with a few lines of new writing. I’m sure I will find a few more.

I aim to finish this edit in the next week to ten days. Then, I have to compile it from Scrivener as a .rtf file, open it in Word to check the formatting has come across correctly, and save it as a .docx file for my editor. I was thinking that I would write a book, have it proofread, and then send it off!

I am completing this week’s blog on my newly updated M2 MacBook. Sequoia Mac OS 15.0.01 is the latest version of Apple software for MacBooks. The M series silicon chips development has ushered in a new era for MacBooks. I’m on my second MacBook of the M series and haven’t had any trouble with it. The way that the silicon chips manage the processing was and still is unique, although I see that laptops claiming similar speeds and software architecture are starting to appear on the market. 

Back to Sequoia, I’ve yet to review all the new widgets and features downloaded thoroughly, but the one major thing I have come across is iPhone mirroring. This feature allows your iPhone’s screen to be mirrored onto the screen of your MacBook. I can deal with any notifications that come into my phone on screen rather than messing around finding my phone, which I might find helpful.

We are off on our travels for a few days in a few weeks. We have power banks to keep our phones charged, and for some time now, I have been looking for something to charge our Apple Watches. This week, I found something that fits the bill. The small emergency power bank with a built-in 1000mAh battery will charge my watch 1/1.5 times, which will be ideal for our days out when needed and when we are camping again in 2025. 

So there we are for this week. I don’t know the timeline for the publication of ‘Beasting Dartmoor’ or how it will be published. I’ll have to see how the editing goes. When it comes back, there will be some work to do, and I can judge whether I would be confident sending it out to publishers for consideration. At that point, I can decide on the way I wish to go with it

Until next week, have a good one.