Still racing on

Another week of plot twists and characters surprising me. I've slowed down a bit (phew) and have written another eleven thousand words, the book is developing nicely and I know how it ends (sort of). It will be a relief when the Twins book comes back from my helpful agent with ideas on how to improve it, tidy it up etc. to see if it's ready to go out into the world. Scary stuff but exciting. 

The cottage we bought is in Appledore, a great fishing village full of lovely, friendly people. I have joined the Appledore book Festival volunteers, and hope to do some stewarding in September. I so enjoyed some of the workshops there last year.

My absolute favourite was a workshop given by two printmakers, one of which lives in North Devon called Merlyn Chesterman. I absolutely love her woodcuts, and she ran off a massive print while we were there, incredible. If I had a big enough wall I would want to buy one of these:

And if I had an even bigger wall I would go for one of the Pine Feroda prints that she is part of. She has a wall of prints at the Coffee Cabin in Appledore and her studio is in Hartland. I love prints, they do something that paintings don't do for me, they are like - well, printing words as opposed to scribbling in pencil. There is something permanent and authoritative about them. 

Making prints makes me write poetry, I don't know why. I've been teaching poetry all over the place and it's making me work on new drafts and old ones. Poetry makes you think about all the connected meanings of words, how they don't just have a dictionary meaning but carry culture and history and mean different things to different people. Words are wonderful. 

A really productive week

I'm at 26k, the tension is ramping up and I've fallen in love with my new character. This must be what it's like to have a plan for a book. Because I've already written this story before (eight years ago) there's a broad structure and I know the three principal characters very well. My writing rate is higher because I don't have to keep stopping to let the plot ferment, it's just developing from the original basic story. At this rate it will be done and dusted by June, ready to go away for a while to rise like dough, so I can work on it when all the ideas have settled in. Hopefully by the end it's one coherent book, and all in my head at the same time. At the moment I keep forgetting what the cat's called and whether I named her sister. I like my main character, Phoebe. I realise I tend to write about damaged women who fight back for their place in the world, never truer than for this character.

My inspiration was a book I read many years ago abut the seven women who were attacked by the Yorkshire Ripper (Peter Sutcliffe) who didn't die. He killed 13 women in total, which is dreadful enough, but attacked these others with the intention of killing them. While I am glad they survived, it must have been a long road to recovery, both physical and psychological. 

I was also inspired by an interview with Richard Kuklinski, the 'Ice Man'. As a psychopath, he was interested in his own psychological landscape, and that fascinated me. He killed (in his own words) approximately a hundred or more. I have some sympathy for the man despite his crimes - he had a nature that couldn't empathise with his victims and was exploited as a hit man. The questions was raised, was he a product of his abusive childhood or of his genes, as the child of a psychopath? 

The great satisfaction of writing new stories

I'm loving writing new stories. One of the things they don't warn you about is that most of the work of writing a book is actually rewriting, editing, polishing. Because I started several books at the same time they all needed reworking at the same time - oops. I got bogged down in edits. The Secrets of Time and Fate needed its final tweaking - just as important as the first structural edits - and just as time consuming. On the plus side, I really enjoyed sailing down the Mediterranean with my characters, feeling the waves under the keel, rowing in silence past Barbary slavers at midnight, exploring Brindisi and Crete and Corfu in the sixteenth century. The contemporary showdown was fun to write too, rounding off my characters' stories.

Now I'm writing new stuff, and for once I have a plan! Not a very comprehensive plan, admittedly, but I have the structure of a previous book to work from, and that's helping. My three principals come from a book I wrote years ago, and although the focus has changed they haven't, not very much. I've managed to find four writing days in the last week, and have already written 16k words. I think this intensive writing is possible because I do already know where the story is headed, I don't have to work out what happens next all the time. Assuming the book will be about 100k at the end of the first draft, I'm hoping to be at 25k by the end of the week - a quarter of the way. How satisfying is that? When I get stuck, I'm going back to the Lorina project, which is taking shape too. I do realise I'll fall into the doldrums at some point, but I'm enjoying myself in the meantime.

I've been asked to teach a novel writing workshop, which I'm working on. That should be fun! I also met a load of new writers at Okehampton, lovely people with a passion for writing. I'm looking forward to seeing what they come up with. Creative writing groups in North Devon are thriving.

Coming up for air

It's been such a long time since I blogged, which is unusual for me. But for the very best reason - I've been writing. 

The Secrets of Time and Fate comes out in June (Del Rey), I've completed the Twins book, and A Baby's Bones (and sequel) are polished up and ready to go out see see if anyone likes them. I like them which is my main thing - I like the main characters. I'm pretty happy with the cover, too. 

It occurs to me that if you love your characters, that creeps out in the writing. In my last book ('The Twins Book!) I found my antagonist really scary, and hope that's crept into the writing too. Locations too - as I start writing The Lorina Book (seriously, why can't I do titles?) I've found the cottage starting to colour my descriptions. We got the house in January and have been sorting out the damp, finding ways to dry it out and make it comfortable - but I write so much more away from the distractions of home. 

Meanwhile, we're selling our main house so we don't spend so much time travelling, and to downsize now we have room for the boys at Appledore. Wish us luck!

Space to breathe, space to work

The cottage is progressing gently, surveys have come back (not falling down), money has been collected and a million forms filled in. We will have a cottage by the sea hopefully by the end of December. the idea makes us both more imaginative, walking along the seafront makes us feel like children. This is a dream come true for us - who thought we would ever be able to afford to live in such a nice place, just for fun? OK, it's our entire pension fund as well - worth having anyway. 

Planning a space only nine feet wide is fun too -   it does make you think carefully about what can go where, how wide everything is. My parents live on a narrowboat so are experts in narrow living, nearly nine feet seems capacious beside a boat. Hopefully a lot of our spare stuff can go to the cottage, including the odd spare offspring. 

The Twins book is almost finished, I'm onto a third draft, just a run through to fix a big plot twist that didn't work. Going through the second draft I found a much better one. I think some writers struggle to do a first draft, think they can tidy up the language and the grammar a bit, and it's done. Maybe it is for some people, but I'm not one of them. Mine evolves between and during drafts. I know my characters so much better now, I know the sub-plots, I can see where a character came in and then just disappeared. More work, more time but I want to get it right.

Meanwhile, I'm making linocuts and these are drawing out strange poetry. All inspired by Appledore.

Octopus

The Secrets of Blood and Bone - the paperback!

The Secrets of Blood and Bone comes out in paperback today! Apart from being in the final stages of polishing book 3, The Secrets of Time and Fate for its release next year (can't wait, it's my favourite!) the book coming out in paperback is a treat. Hardbacks are lovely things but most readers want a paperback. I've been lucky to get some lovely reviews in America after the launch there, and hope we'll see a bit of feedback over here too!

Meanwhile, I've been engaging with bloggers and internet publishing sites in the US, answering questions and writing articles:

http://www.sffworld.com/2015/09/rebecca-alexander-interview/
http://whatever.scalzi.com/2015/09/03/the-big-idea-rebecca-armstrong/ (never mind the name!)
http://www.sfsignal.com/archives/2015/09/guest-post-rebecca-alexander-author-secrets-blood-bone-role-science-fantasy-writing/

It's been a long time coming, I'm thrilled to see it out and hopefully book 3 won't be too far behind. It was great fun to take the characters further, to resolve the whole story arc. Book 3 involves Kelley at sea in the pirate ridden, storm driven Mediterranean, Felix trying to uncover the science behind borrowed time with an unlikely ally from the Bathory legacy, and the key to longevity coded into obscure poems by Eliza Weston - Kelley's daughter -  as she struggles to outsmart Elizabeth Bathory.  And, of course, resolves what happened to Jack, last seen dropping off a bridge into the river... As other writers will tell you, trilogies are hard - where do you draw the line between writing a standalone book and keeping a longer story running through. I hope the whole series will be resolved at the end of book 3 although I have already started writing, for my own pleasure, book 4. The characters live in my head now, they are part of the family!

Meanwhile, I've been collaborating with a lot of local writers on an anthology of short fictions, poems and memoir, which also comes out today. More about that later!

Meanwhile I have to find mental space to get back to work on the Twins book, the second draft is pulling together really well, ready to go off to my agent. Although writing has seemed like crawling through treacle, this year I have written pretty well two whole books and planned a third. It's giving me lots of editing to do up to Christmas.

Once upon a time...

...I dreamed of a cottage by the sea. The sea feeds my imagination like nothing else, it fills me with energy, I even sleep better when I've been out on the beach. But our new house is tucked away by a big river, a few miles inland. Then I inherited some money, and if my son and I put our little funds together we could - almost - afford the shabbiest, tiniest, most story-book wreck of a cottage. It's pretty run down - my son is unimpressed by the rather basic kitchen and plumbing arrangements - but I love it. I love it so much a book is writing itself out of the house, even before we get the keys. Now we're balancing paperwork from the bank, the solicitors, the mortgage (we didn't quite have enough) all to buy a two-up, two-down writing retreat a few yards from the quayside at Appledore. You can hear the sea through the cracked single glazed windows. Sea breezes rocket down the open chimneys and fill the air with soot. The only toilet is outside in the yard. I love it.

It's been a strange two years. My first book was published in the same week my husband got the news that he had a virulent cancer and it had already started to spread. His reaction was that he wanted to move from my lovely house to this new town, which has been a sensible and grown up thing to do. But my imagination, somehow, didn't get packed. Writing books I started in 'the big house' was fine, but I was starting to worry that new ideas were just not coming. Well, that's all changed. Not only do I have my creative non-fiction project to work on, I am starting a new Sci-Fi book and writing this 'house' book. I'm looking forward to working on it in the house.

The place is very small, and completely cluttered, and we're all excited about ripping out carpets, rubbing down window frames and rewiring so it can at least be warm. Warm and dry. And sparsely furnished with the pieces that didn't fit in the new house that I miss. The aim is to create a writing retreat to give me somewhere to de-stress, and perhaps let it out to fellow creatives in time. the whole loft is a big studio space, lit by two roof windows, one facing south and one north, looking over the roofs to the estuary beyond. Lovely. It's a bit of a shame you can only get there climbing up a ladder like a bookcase. Maybe we'll have enough money after the rewire for some proper stairs.

Book 2 has come out in the states, and I'm thrilled about it. It even looks gorgeous, I love the cover.