Saint Justice audio & more AMS trials – 2020 Writing Week 5

Mike Grist Weekly Media Update, Weekly Writing Update Leave a Comment

This week I’ve been drafting hard behind my fantastic narrator, Nick Cracknell. He finished up reading Saint Justice yesterday, and I put together a helluva edits document, with lots of re-reads, snippets to be cut out, and so forth. He finished it today. Now all that remains is for me to double-check, approve, pay, make the audiobook cover, and BOOM goes the dynamite, my first Wren thriller will be up! Wow. A month, all in. Feb will be for book 2, maybe also book 3. So exciting. And so many edits! I’m really glad Nick is game to do them. …

Repetition! Explanation! AMS Experimentation – 2020 Writing Week 3&4

Mike Grist Weekly Writing Update, Writing Leave a Comment

Oh my word, do the lessons about my writing frailties ever end? Saint Justice edits I thought a had a bead on my tendency to run long, self-indulge and repeat myself endlessly – but actually all those lessons have come most powerfully since I edited the Last Mayor whole series. I blathered via deep-cut technobabble, repeating events from alternate perspectives and just foggy logic. That’s all gone now from the Last Mayor. But the Last Mayor edits took place after I wrote Christopher Wren 1. Oh my. Now, with the narrator reading the book and presenting it to me in …

Wren audiobook, LIA, Wren 4 – 2020 Writing Week 2

Mike Grist Weekly Writing Update, Writing Leave a Comment

This week was my second at a new job, so it’s been tricky to find the time for writing – I got motion sickness from trying to write on the bus, and ended up nauseous for three days. Ugh, never again. To boot, the campus I’m at is right next to an airport (like two hundred yards from the runway across water) so every time a plane goes up or comes down, the air fills with the pollutant backwash of burnt jet fuel. Double ugh. But smile 🙂 I’m much better now, and the weekend is here! Wren 1 audiobook …

Polishing zombies, Wren edits for audio – 2020 Writing Week 1

Mike Grist Weekly Writing Update, Writing Leave a Comment

I finished major edits of the Last Mayor series right on target at the end of 2019, but there were a few little bits to rework in book 1 in the first week of the new year. We had a holiday! Su and I went to Stratford on Avon for 2 nights, stayed in a great hotel with good spa facilities. Our days we spent being inspired by the Bard, our afternoons in the spa (sauna for me), our evenings editing and reading. Wonderful. A mini writing retreat. I chopped The Last a little, then put it up. Now I …

2019 Writing Update & 2020 Plans

Mike Grist Writing, Yearly Writing Update Leave a Comment

2019 has been the biggest year of my writing career to date, with a lot of learning, a lot of rewriting, some new launches and no small measure of success. Primarily three projects defined the year: 1. Mr. Ruin rewrite, rebrand, relaunch I had pretty high hopes for the rebrand of Mr. Ruin as Soul Jacker. I put a lot of time, money and effort into getting various edits, rewriting the books, getting new covers, attaining high-profile blurbs and setting up a lot of promotion in early 2019, only to find that the readers just weren’t there. It was a …

Finishing The Light edits, & a new series? – Writing Update 2019 Week 52

Mike Grist Weekly Writing Update, Writing 1 Comment

This week has been a full-time load of editing, with fitting in some family time in the middle. I’ve been working on the secret editing project, thinking about Wren book 4, finishing up The Last Mayor book 9 rework The Light, and ALSO dreaming up a new series. In turn: The Light rework With this last book in the Last Mayor series reworked, I have now completely rewritten the whole 9-book series! It is a pretty huge thing to do. I had it down for some future date, if I had time, spread out over years. Rather, thanks to sales …

Stopped all FB ads, ACX auditions, edits – Writing Update 2019 Week 51

Mike Grist Weekly Writing Update, Writing Leave a Comment

The last week (almost last week of 2019!) I’ve been working on 5 things: Battling the intro and concept for Wren book 4 Reworking Last Mayor book 9 Editing a secret project (not mine – more some point later) Listening to audiobook auditions for Saint Justice Finishing up 5 years at my old job, On Campus London teaching English. I’ve also done my taxes and taken stock of ad success in the last few months. Thanks to affiliate links attached to various Facebook ads, I’ve known for some time that those ads didn’t seem to be connected very much to …

The Lies breakthrough & Wren comments – Writing Update 2019 Week 50

Mike Grist Weekly Writing Update, Writing Leave a Comment

The Lies – For 2 weeks I’ve been struggling with my zombie book 8, The Lies – trying to figure out how to cut it so it makes sense, goes faster and captures what I wanted to do originally. Challenges standing in the way are the usuals, but in complex ways – repetition of past material, proliferation of deep tech explanations – plus something less problematic in previous books: low-stakes but high energy conflict. The central story is Amo learning who he needs to kill, setting up book 9 and the climax. There’s a lot of backstory, told live in …

Wren Bookbub, audiobooks and too much gore – Writing Update 2019 Week 47, 48, 49

Mike Grist Weekly Writing Update, Writing 1 Comment

On Thurs Nov 28 (Thanksgiving) I had the Bookbub for book one of the Chris Wren thriller series – Saint Justice. It was free in all markets, exclusive to KU. I never thought I’d get the BB without going wide, and was in fact planning on a wide run early in 2020, but applied while exclusive anyway on a whim. Well, they took it and ran it and now we have results – 24,000 free given away on the 28th, another 4,000 on the 29th, another 1,000 on the 30th. It held #1 position in Amazon free stores in UK, …

Edits on The Lash & lessons for Wren – Writing Update 2019 Week 46

Mike Grist Weekly Writing Update, Writing Leave a Comment

This week has been consumed by editing The Lash, my Last Mayor zombie book 9. There have been some real ups and downs, crises of confidence, which I didn’t get when editing the earlier books in the series. This one took one major unusual step – flipping Amo from the good guy to the bad guy – and addressing that was a challenge. Here’s what I did with them all: Cerulean dreams Naturally there were some interwoven, consistent Cerulean dreams throughout the novel, all in Amo’s POV. It happened in the Yangtze Darkness – some complex stuff about Amo getting …