“No Working Title” is now live on Amazon

My first novel, No Working Title has gone live on Amazon.com (and .co and .everything available!)

It’s available as an e-book and a print copy if you are tactile.

The conversion to final draft and typesetting is why it was taken down from view on this blog.

If you like your crime with bare knuckles and cheap scotch, go have a look!

Editing is boring

I have my novel, No Working Title, open with my editor’s notes side by side with my manuscript.

I’m up to chapter 6 out of 22.

And here I am, on wordpress. Cause, meet effect.

Before you throw rocks at me, I’m fully aware that the work NEEDS to be edited, and every comment so far has moved the story to a better place. But MAN!

WHINE!

DON’T WANNA!

*stampy feet*

*deep breath* Now that is off my chest, it is back to the editing.

Does a continuing character need a continuing nemesis?

Holmes had Moriarty. Kay Scarpetta had Temple Gault. All through crime fiction our favourite continuing characters have continuing nemeses.

But do they have to have them? Cannot our gumshoes walk the mean streets and face enough danger without acquiring some kind of fantastic super-enemy? Characters should be human, and humans don’t acquire enduring enemies – cartoon heroes do.

Or am I wrong?

Part one of Begin Writing Here has moved to PDF on the STORIES page

I am currently putting BWH on hold while some mental processes sort themselves out in relation to that storyline.

In its stead, I am investigating a steampunk ‘universe’ where the histories diverged around the time of the Unification of Italy / American Civil War (or war between the states, depending on your preference). The timeline has broadly moved on to roughly the 1930’s. It is a time of social divides and financial unrest (who knew that our futures markets were based on efforts by a bankrupt confederacy to sell cotton not yet grown to raise funds for the war?), and into the middle of this, down streets made dark by soot, walks our hero.

Coal fired noir….