The Crooked Medium's Guide to Sequels
Joy of the Tricky Second Album
Here is the writing news
A small cheering start, is that I was shortlisted for, but did not get into, The Best of British Science Fiction anthology, for the one SF short story I published in that year. It’s Always Your Choice was a personal response to my Dad’s Alzheimer’s and the Assisted Dying Debate – an artistic response, not a manifesto.
A personal positive note from an editor is a morale boost -particularly when they had a record number of submissions.
Top Tips for Loving a Lizard remains with a high-quality small press, while they wait to find a suitable pair story for it. (And I am not allowed to write one under a pseudonym.) I may have to publish it myself.
Medea, by Frederick Sandys, via Birmingham Museums. Victorian society was troubled by powerful women, despite who was Queen-Empress at the time.
Crooked Medium Two:
Of course, it’s a spooky Victorian murder mystery, with Mrs Ashton, Braddie and Maisie well to the fore, set almost a year after The Crooked Medium’s Guide to Murder. (Allowing time for a future adventure or two between the books.) It opens with an open verdict inquest into a man killed on the railway. His fiancee wants answers about this tragic death. Meanwhile, Maisie meets a compelling, younger, rival medium to Mrs Ashton…
Frankly, I am really pleased with the current draft at 79k words. At one point I thought it would be the only creative work I had done in the last decade that would end up under length. Jury is out on whether it has too many characters and strands. I’m following the idea that provided all plot rivers run to the same sea, the book has a good chance of working.
I’m an iterative writer - I’ve moved from ‘shoddy first draft’ to ‘OK first draft’ and the aim is a ‘strong first draft’ - something I can show people. One of the reasons is iteration is, for me, things tend to work themselves out in the writing, painful as it can be.
Another editing pass, and I will send to beta readers in February. Feedback on that draft gives me a robust view of what the final book will be. These are strong readers giving their own honest opinion. It’s a good time to start musing on titles, cover, and pitch, and start the synopsis.
I’d like to publish this year for the autumn convention rounds but no promises.
Jessica Fletcher, serial killer
A friend grumbled in a sweeping way about how unrealistic it is that amateur detectives get involved in so many crimes, citing a certain TV detective. Mrs Ashton is a medium, often in London (at this time, the largest city in the world). People come to her concerned about deaths, d’uh. She’s also a notorious public figure, receives correspondence from all over the country, and meets odd people through her charity work. She has a shady past. Finally, I’m not planning to do 20 of these books though I do have two short stories about Mrs A and Braddie.
Tricky Second Album
I put it down for a few months and I’ve had to reconfigure some of the story which wasn’t working. If you could pay to have your writing process magically reconfigured I would be tempted. Yet I know fast and successful writers who are even more ‘write it and see’ than I am.
Editing a historic sequel involves cross checking with the first one – did I say whether Inspector Bullfinch had children and if so how many? - and also an endless process of – how did the doors on a two-seater carriage work? How many people had telephones in 1882? And a personal bete noire, etiquette and forms of address. I’m talking a conscious decision not to be rigorous, in particular circumstances, as it can make scenes with several people unclear.
Venerating Victorians
I think writing a book about male violence, the gap between rich and poor, who gets justice, what redemption means, and what we owe to each other, is not a waste of time in the current circumstances…
Good writing advice not from me
I thought this interview of SFF superstar Adrian Tchaikovsky was brilliant, an hour of top-notch stuff. Firstly, like a lot of experienced writers, he explains his process eloquently but understands other things work for other people. Second, as a big exponent of plotting his books, he’s now finding equal success with a not so plotted series. And these are shades on a scale anyway. I agree with a lot and respect the rest. Oh, and lots more gems besides. I watched in chunks it was so rich. In an era of begging bowl arts, there’s a generosity to just doing this which is far from rare among SFF people.