On Tuesday we had the London Indie Authors Marketing Meetup – a record number were in attendance, after some 25 expressed interest. We had perhaps 17 total, with our resident French octogenarian coming down from Oxford, our resident film critic coming in late (as ever), and a host of thriller, rom-com, drama and memoir authors all round.
- Brad told us about his book’s nomination for the Hollywood Voice Arts award.
- Kaye talked about her amazing success with Amazon UK ads.
- Leena got a critique on her new book’s blurb.
It was a jam-packed session, which naturally devolved to the pub, where I caught up with co-organizer Jerome and several others. My 2019 of networking is off to a good start. Next up is the Society of Authors Novelists Meetup next Wednesday.
Editing
Yesterday I had a mini-wobble of faith in the Ruin series – the editing of book 2 has been slow and torturous. When I got into the section with the chord inside the sunken mind, it just seemed to draaaag.
I know why. I wrote these sections to a very specific plan – I wanted the symmetry of 15 chapters by 15. That meant some padding was needed, though I didn’t realize it at the time. I do however remember that some of these sections, dealing with great erupting mud bubbles and firing grapnels through a mud tsunami, were incredibly easy to write.
I’ve since learned to take that as a warning sign. Wheels spinning fast doesn’t mean you’re moving forward. I had to cut all these bits judiciously, write new bits to stitch up the parts that still worked, suture them together with lots of little changes, and then press on with more of the same today.
Ugh. Except today flowed quite differently. The story from here on tightens right up and gets on point. I sped up sufficiently to finally hit the halfway point – 40,000 words in an 80,000-word book.
It’s probably going to take me until the end of Feb to get book 3 done too. Then race off the third thriller by May and release – no agent news still. Two trilogies out in fast succession – watch this space…