Paul Stephenson's Blog, page 10

Current dystopia vs future dystopia

Somewhere around the time that the world’s most powerful nation elected a direct hybrid of fascism and unwarranted white privilege as its leader, and my own country’s older generation decided to flush their descendants down a toilet of economic, social, and philosophical uncertainty, I remarked on Twitter that it was a tough time to be writing dystopian fiction. What with the rolling news of the day outpacing you for horrific developments.

I was hardly alone in that statement, it was one echoed by a thousand authors and writers, all of us spectacularly missing the point about the worst affected by these development and making it all about us.

But while the hardships of sitting at a desk trying to work out what things to make up hardly compare to those facing family separation or deportation, there still are difficulties in trying to navigate what future to paint for your readers during a time of such unrelenting uncertainty. I’ll wait while you get out your world’s tiniest violin to play while I tell you why.

Ready?

For example, the book I’m writing at the moment has a strong current of corruption at corporate and governmental levels. But how the hell can I compete with the collision between stupidity and greed rolling across our feeds every waking moment? Every time I read about some other staggeringly unprecedented example of corruption by our current set of dear leaders, I have to bump up the level of corruption in my own tale. To do otherwise would be to appear idiotically naïve. Or worse, boring.

But where to put the line between reality and fiction? Recent BBC One hit The Bodyguard clearly felt the need to ramp up the potential narratives of political backstabbery beyond the levels of our current government, but because that level is ludicrously high the whole thing had a ring of unreality to it that was only just offset by its constantly moving plotline.

That’s not all. This is the first book I’ve written where I need to extrapolate a future world that will be recognisable to a modern audience, and hopefully not date as badly as Back to the Future Two (love that film, but hands up everyone who dresses like that and has a hoverboard). This presents a very strange challenge, of picking things to show that could change in the interim, be they technology and gadgets, transport, infrastructure, scientific understanding, cultural progression, or just how people eat their food. Pick just one of these things and keep everything else the same and there’s going to be people wondering why the hell people are still using cars a hundred years in the future. Change it all, and you’re in serious danger of overloading with change, and having to info-dump to do it.

The key, I think (hope), is in trying to show only that which impacts on the central plot, or the journey of the characters. Still, that can be daunting when you consider that characters are going to travel, they’re going to communicate digitally, they’re going to eat food. You need to show that, without being all ‘hey look at the changes I’m predicting’. On the other hand, you can’t just ignore it like every movie in the 90’s did when it came to mobile phones.

In short, writing a dystopia is challenging. I have sheets of notes on changes that the world might go through in the next hundred years. Most of it won’t come true. In fact, it’s probably better for humanity if not much of it comes true. Either way, I’d really like to stop the news cycle for a few years, so I can get this damn book out without it being dated before it even launches.

Which is probably the worst reason ever to be scared about the news.

Blood on the Motorway: An apocalyptic trilogy of murder and stale sandwiches is out now in ebook and print from Amazon and all other good bookstores. You can get the first book free by joining my mailing list or read along at Wattpad. Oh, and I’ve got a Patreon.

I finished a thing

I finished a thing. Well, not really. I finished one draft of a thing. A book. A novel. A world made purely from thoughts and old bits of string. A collection of digital information laid out inside my computer in not quite the same order from whence it poured out of my head and came out through my fingers. A marvel. A thing that existed not in this world, that now does.

One of the things that I think compels me to write, just as the power of Christ compelled Regan to stop doing the head-spinny thing, is the sheer weirdness of it. As wiser heads have stated, the fact that I can make up people in my head and write stories about them down, and then anyone can read those words and make that same person up in their own head, is properly magical. I can tell a joke on paper, then years later someone can read it and laugh. I can make a figment of my imagination feel sad, or hurt, and then make you feel sad or hurt on their behalf, even though they never existed outside of my head, and then yours.

At the moment the thing of which I have finished (kind of) is about to go to a few people to take a look at. It’s about the scariest thing in the world, apart from those moments when you see children toppling over in some kind of peril and for a split second literally anything terrible could befall them. But it’s about at that level.

Because that whole thing where it’s magical, and wonderful? That only works if the people who read it find those people coming to life in their own heads. If they find themselves drawn in enough to laugh, or hurt, or feel sad. And there’s no faking that. You do, or you don’t. If they don’t, then I’ve just wasted a few years of my life. I’ve worked and reworked this novel so much that I honestly can’t tell any more. I think it’s good. I hope it’s good. It might be not good.

So I’m like a child right now, teetering backwards over a precipice where there could be literally anything below me. Dragons or pillows. Spiders or pudding. Bad monkeys or catching monkeys.

I guess I’ll find out, soon enough.

Blood on the Motorway: An apocalyptic trilogy of murder and stale sandwiches is out now in ebook and print from Amazon and all other good bookstores. You can get the first book free by joining my mailing list or read along at Wattpad. Oh, and I’ve got a Patreon.

Life Changes vs Writing

As a fledgling Indie Author, I suffer the same general disregard towards a healthy work/life balance as most of the other idiots who decide that writing thousands of made up words is a good idea. Writers, we tend to label ourselves as. Now, I’m finding that already strained balance put to breaking point.

For the most part, unless you’re Stephen King or one of those mad people who can spin gold from judicious use of Facebook ads, us writers have to go to day jobs – those irksome things that put food on the table, pay the bills, and allow us to interact with real people who don’t just live in our heads.

A few weeks ago, I moved jobs, I moved homes, and I moved circumstances, and I have to say it’s put a right cramp into my writing mojo. For one thing, I’ve gone from having a luxurious office with a massive expanse of oak in the middle of it, to having a bit of room on the kitchen table when there’s no Lego on it. 

I’ve gone from working from home and being able to carve out writing time like some kind of mad carver of things, to being forced to find the odd thirty minutes here and there between wanting to spend actual talking time with the rest of my family and having to follow my dog around the green spaces around us with a plastic bag in my hand.

Thankfully, the one thing that hasn’t changed is the battle-wearied support of my family, who are used to getting glared at when they dare to ask me a genuinely important question when I’m trying to hold a whole scene in my head, or when I accidentally hear some noise elsewhere in the house that ruptures my oh-so-delicate train of thought. However, I’ve tested that patience to breaking point over the last few weeks, and I’ve realised that with my changed circumstances, a change in attitude to my writing must come too.

The long and short of it is this – I’ve dramatically shed the amount of time I have to write, at the exact moment I’ve lost anywhere decent to write.

So, after two weeks of this juggling conundrum, here are my top 5 tips for dealing with life changes as a writer, because if 2018 has told us anything it’s that two weeks doing anything makes you automatically enough of an expert to opine about it on the internet.

Don’t write in the same room as a television. I really thought I’d be able to sit at the kitchen table, just behind the sofa, stick some headphones in, and ignore the TV. Turns out, I can’t. The only way to block out the babble of talking is to turn your music up so loud that you won’t be able to hear yourself think anyway. Also, the TV is where the other people in your house tend to talk to each other, and when they say anything at all you’ll find yourself taking your headphones off and saying ‘what?’

Don’t write in bed. Eventually I alighted on the bedroom as the one place I could shut out the world and concentrate on writing, the only problem being that I could only really do that by sitting on the bed. Not only is that terrible for your back (and mine already barely functions as a support mechanism), but your knees just don’t have the stability that a table does. Who would have thunk it?

You’re not the only person who lives in your house so don’t be a dick. After a few days of sulking at everyone for not giving me the room I needed to write, it dawned on me that it’s not really reasonable for three other people and a dog to treat the entirety of their home like a library whenever I happen to get the whim to write. I came to this realisation a lot later than everyone else.

Short bursts are better than nothing. I had gotten used to being able to lock myself away and spend a few hours writing, coming away with a few thousand words and a sense of achievement. Now, I might be able to snatch fifteen minutes here and there, and come away with a handful of paragraphs. Once I realised that THIS IS FINE, I became a lot happier. Adjust your expectations to your reality.

There are other places. Tonight, I’m heading to our local library after work, where I’ll be able to work for at least an hour, and there’s no chance a small child will come and ask my where his Captain Underpants book is just as I’m trying to round off a paragraph. They also apparently now have these things called cafés, where I can apparently enjoy some peace and quiet at the same time as I can enjoy a coffee and possibly even a cake. I can’t see that catching on, so I’ll have to try and use them while the fad still lasts.

So, there you have it. Basically, don’t be an arse to your family because they don’t deserve it, get used to writing differently, and get out of the house a bit more.

If you liked this advice and wish to fund my getting out of the house, you can donate the cost of a cup of coffee to me by going to my ko.fi page. Or you could buy one of my books, because then I’ll know it’s worth me writing more of them.

Out of Exile

September of 1997. OK Computer and Fat of the Land ride high in the album charts. Princess Diana’s funeral blankets every single television screen in the country. And, in one of the less salubrious corners of Essex, an eighteen year old version of myself packs up my collection of black band t-shirts and my VHS towers and heads from the green and unpleasant lands, into to the great unknown. 

The North.

I chose The North quite at random. I wanted to do the then relatively niche subject of Media Studies at degree level, but also wanted to study politics. There were only a few universities offering that particular combination at that time — Glasgow, and Sunderland being among the only ones. At the time of choosing, I’d just seen Trainspotting, so I didn’t much fancy Scotland. I knew nothing about Sunderland, except that it was going to offer me a place, which seemed nice of them, given that they’d never met me, either. I never so much as visited, until that first September day.

As a southerner, I knew little about the north other than what I’d seen on television. Back then, that was pretty much limited to Coronation Street and Our Friends in the North, neither of which offered great comfort. I’d never gotten into the Manchester scene on account of the guitars not having any distortion on them. So, it seems pretty remarkable now that eighteen-year-old me decided that picking myself up and flinging myself as far north as it’s possible to get and stay in England was a good idea.

Spoiler alert - it was.

I never did get round to studying much of the media, or the politics, but I did end up having a wild old time in Sunderland. I met tremendously good people, started a band, DJ’ed in a hundred dive bars, fell in love, fell out of love, and watched a lot of Neighbours. I also found a city that was both wildly inhospitable, and wonderfully welcoming. I was chased home more than once for being ‘student scum’, once while carrying a box full of cd’s. I was also taken into houses of local team season ticket holders who’d never met me and ended up being some of the best friends I will ever have.

Five years later, I moved to York. It was a bit south, but not really. Anywhere that feels the need to declare itself as the north of Yorkshire isn’t south. I started turning into an adult for a bit, decided that I really wasn’t ready for all that, and regressed back into the same idiotic childish pursuits that had so kept me entertained in the North East. York was a great place to be young and stupid — getting endlessly drunk in a city that looks that pretty is quite good, and compared to Sunderland, it seemed like the height of culture.

Then I met my lovely wife, and growing up suddenly didn’t seem like such a bad idea. We stayed in York for quite a while, got two kids from somewhere in the eternal ether of life, and grew tired of the place. Well, mainly we got tired of the house we were in, but we hated it so much that we decided to leave the city altogether.

We moved east, near Whitby, where we’ve been for nearly a year. I can’t begin to describe what a wonderful place it is. I always considered myself a city boy, raised in the urban jungle of London, toughened by the hard streets of places like Basildon, Pitsea, and Sunderland. I don’t care much for wildlife, or mud, or the smell of poop. But I’ve loved living in the country. The peace, the views, and again, the people.

Now, in exactly two weeks, after twenty one years in that same North, I am leaving. 

Heading south. Coming home. 

Out of exile. 

Except, it no longer feels life exile. It feels like home, one I’ll be both excited and sad to leave.

It’s a cliche that people in the north are kind and welcoming, but there’s a reason for that, and it’s because they really are. When I first came north it was weird, but now one of my big fears heading back down below the Luton line, is that I’ll have forgotten how to be southern. I’ll go about offering ‘thanks’ and ‘hello’ like some kind of deranged madman, and everyone will look at me, hear the occasional mispronunciation of ‘bath’ and whisper to each other — ‘that man’s gone native…’

It’s an exciting time. In a lot of ways it’s nice to be heading back south. For one, I’ll be heading to an entirely new part of the country — the south west, where they have comedy accents and talk about combine harvesters and scrumpy. That should keep me entertained for a while. I’ll also be nearer to the London that in my heart still feels a lot like home, so I might occasionally get to see my team play footenball, or see Hamilton before I die.

But it’s also true that I’ll miss the north. It too, is home. A wonderful place that changed me from a boy into a man, gave me a wonderful family, and friends of incredible incredibleness. 

Farewell, The North.

Blood on the Motorway: An apocalyptic trilogy of murder and stale sandwiches is out now in ebook and print from Amazon and all other good bookstores. You can get the first book free by joining my mailing list.

More ways to support your favourite bearded British apocalyptic author.

I am CONSTANTLY being asked by readers who have already bought all my books how they can best support me, their favourite author. Well, okay, one reader asked me, once, ages ago. But it stuck in my head, mainly because I didn’t really have an answer apart from ‘mumble mumble review the books, tell your friends, mumble mumble,’ which is, in fact, my de-facto response to most human-to-human interactions.

Since I was relaunching the books (huge thanks to anyone who’s helped with that effort by the way, hugely hugely thanks) I decided that now’s the time to address this discrepancy between people having money they might like to give me in exchange for goods and services and me not having more goods and services to exchange. So, without further ado, I’d like to tell you about two huge new ways you can support me and my book-making adventure.

Patreon.

Yep, I’ve got me a Patreon, and its all about supporting me as I work on the next series, The Chronicles of Mar. The Chronicles will be a massive dystopian epic, set one hundred years in Earth's future, amidst a backdrop of war, hunger, and plague. But, it'll still have jokes in it, I promise. There'll also be ice moons, telepaths, a truly global cast, and some gripping and thrilling rides. Oh, and did I mention it'll be nine books long?

I'll be sharing work in progress, character and world profiles, exclusive blog posts, and monthly video Q&A's, not to mention first looks at merchandise, discount codes, and lots more. Visit my Patreon page and out the rewards to see more details of what's on offer. Oh, did I mention you'll get all of the books, for free, for as long as you're a supporter?

Having readers join me on the journey will help to provide me with a stable monthly income, which goes straight back into the books. I'm really proud of the Blood on the Motorway series, and I think this is going to be really special. It’s going to allow me to get up close and personal with the whole process with you, dear reader. So I really hope you’ll join me.

Merchandise

Don’t fancy forking out a monthly amount? Find yourself with a serious mug deficiency? Love the new covers enough to put one up on your wall? Well, then you’re in luck! You can now order mercy directly from my store, which you can find if you click on (funnily enough) STORE at the top of the page, or by going here. I’m just playing around with this at the moment, but if there’s something you’d like to see there that isn’t there at the moment, please let me know. All items ship from both the US, and the EU, so no huge shipping costs, either.

You’ll also notice I’m now offering the ebooks directly through my site. This obviously means that I’m sitting out the charges I pay to Amazon et al, so if you are interested in the books, why not get them straight from me, and support me that way? I’ll also be introducing signed print books through the site, soon enough.

So there you have it. Never let it be said that I don’t offer you enough ways to give me money, eh?

Blood on the Motorway - now available as nuggets of thrill

The first time I ever let serialised fiction worm its hooks into me, I was seventeen, and still firmly in the grip of my Stephen King obsession. His new book, The Green Mile, was released as a serialised affair, split into six small books. From what I recall, they were only available through WHSmiths in the UK, although I might be misremembering now. It was over twenty years ago, after all. But I loved/hated having to wait until the next edition came out, and even dimly recall waiting for WH Smiths to open on the day the final chapter of the story came out.

Of course, nowadays everything is serialised, broken into chunks that you can consume at your own leisure, one Netflix box set at a time. Which got me thinking about my three novels and the way that people consume them. I read books in much the same way I always have, having flirted with ebooks and gone back to paper, reading a lot of the same authors I always have, while trying to expand my horizons.

But there’s an awful lot of people reading these days who never buy a book. They read a chapter at a time on their phones on places like Wattpad, and you can see why. It’s little morsels, little hits from the fiction bong. So I’ve decided that it’d be cool to service those readers, too. So as of this week, I’m launching Blood on the Motorway, the full series, on Wattpad. One chapter a week, until the whole damn saga is done. It might take a few years, but if you’re into little hits of the apocalypse, go here and start reading. 

Since it’s a chapter a week, I’ll also be adding some extra bits and pieces, and a link to the song that gives the chapter its title. Should be a lot of fun. I’m really looking forward to going through the whole saga once more. There's three chapters up already to get you started, and new chapters will be added every Wednesday.

And hey, if you like it, give it some love, tell your friends, do whatever you can to get the word out.

Two years of Blood

Hi there from a world that smells distinctly of rotten cabbage. Seriously. I have no idea why, but the world around me that two days ago had blue skies, uncomfortable temperatures and the haze of sea air has been replaced by fog, cold, wind, and the aforementioned cabbage smell. Living in the countryside is weird.

I’ve had a bit of a surreal few weeks for a variety of reasons that I won’t go into now, but I missed the opportunity to mark the second anniversary of my first novel, Blood on the Motorway, which is now officially two years and a few days old. That’s a weird thing to realise, that I’ve had a book baby out there for long enough that its human equivalent would be trashing my living room as it learned to walk. Not only that, but it’s got two siblings that are on their way there, too.

So, in order to honour the anniversary, and given that I’m not going to have a new book out for a while, I’ve decided to relaunch the whole trilogy. I’ve got lovely new covers, new blurbs and the like, and they are a go. So, behold, the new and improved Blood on the Motorway series!

Sexy, aren’t they?

Now we come to the part where I need your help. The point of the new covers and the relaunch is to get the books in front of more readers like yourself, but Amazon and the other stores still see it as a book that’s been out for a few years, so if I’m going to get it in front of readers then we’re going to need to tickle those algorithms.

So, I’ve put Blood on the Motorway at a discounted cost of 99p/99c. If you can spare that, and you’ve not yet bought the book, I’d really appreciate it if you could pick up a copy. If not, if you’ve enjoyed the book why not point them in that direction? Every share on Facebook or Twitter is worth a million ads or posts by me. Or, if you’ve not done so, you could leave a review. Every action like that tickles the mighty algorithm under the chin, and prompts the world’s longest river to put my book in front of more people that might like it. Hell, if we could get Blood… charting in one of the nebulous categories, that’d be amazing.

If you’ve not yet read it, then you’re in for a treat. It's the first book in a trilogy of murder and mayhem set against the backdrop of the end of the world. It follows a disparate group of ordinary people as they try to deal with the fallout.

There's Tom, an ex-student waiting for his life to start or the power to get cut off, whichever comes first. Jen works two jobs, hates both, and most days is too hungover to deal with either. Detective Burnett is trying to work out who the hell has turned his sleepy English village into a murder town.

Then the skies fill with a mysterious storm, and each of them wakes to find streets filled with bodies. The world they knew has gone, and their old lives with it. Now Tom finds himself at the hands of a deranged mercenary, Jen finds herself trying to keep two lovestruck teenagers alive, and Burnett must track down a killer who sees the apocalypse as an opportunity for more mayhem.

Who will survive this gripping and blackly comic saga of murder and stale sandwiches at the world’s end? Well, grab the first book and find out for yourself.

So, if you can spare it, and you want to support your indie author friend, please follow the link and pick up a discounted copy. I’d really appreciate it.

Tickle the algorithm

There’s some other rather exciting stuff, but I’ll come to that another time. In the meantime, if you can help get the word out, that’d be amazing.

Win a truckload of Walking Dead goodies.

I’ve spoken before about the role that the comic of The Walking Dead played in me becoming an author. Before it became a sprawling and colossal TV series, I got quite addicted to the graphic novel. At that time I was already writing a tale about two layabout stoners going on a road trip in the UK, but it wasn’t going anywhere. Then I got the first volume of The Walking Dead, where Kirkman spoke in his intro about getting to the end of every zombie film ever made and wondering what happened next. I felt the same way about every end-of-the-world tome I ever came across. My road trip novel soon morphed into the apocalyptic tome it is today. I wanted to explore that same idea, except removing the zombies altogether.

So, with the second anniversary of the release of Blood on the Motorway fast approaching, I’m beyond delighted to be involved in a very special Walking Dead themed giveaway. Unfortunately, it’s only open to you if you’re in the US, so if that’s not you then, well, sorry about that.

If you are in the US, here’s what’s up for grabs:

'Rick' Walking Dead Fleece Blanket

8" Michonne Walking Dead Vinyl Idolz figure

Daryl Crossbow Coffee Mug

Daryl Crossbow & Angel Wings Walking Dead Keychain

Walking Dead pen & bookmark

Walking Dead luggage tag

Walking Dead magnets

Walking Dead Comic #1

Walking Dead Comic #2

Walking Dead Comic #3

Walking Dead Mini Calendar

Walking Dead button badges

Zombie-opoly Board Game

Zombie ‘Where’s Waldo’ book

Zombie Colouring book for grown-ups

The Ladybird book of the Zombie Apocalypse (for grown-ups)

Zombie necklace

Zombie Outbreak car decal

28 Days Later/28 Weeks Later Blu-ray Set

Romero Dawn of the Dead/Land of the Dead Blu-ray Set

'Undad', Author Shane W. Smith

'A Place Called Hope' & 'A Place Outside the Wild', by Daniel Humphreys, signed by the author.

Entering to win is easy. Just enter your name and email at this link. Follow sponsoring authors on other social media platforms and share the giveaway for additional entries. By entering this giveaway, you AGREE TO BE SUBSCRIBED to the sponsoring author's newsletters listed in italics below. You may individually unsubscribe at any time.

Sponsoring Authors: Eli Constant, Claire C. Riley, Russell Nohelty, Dani Dixon, Matthew Jones, Daniel Humphreys, E.B. Black, Shane W Smith, Kristen Renee Gorlitz, Erica Gerald Mason, L.K. Hatchett, Baileigh Higgins, J.D. Oliva, Carmelo Chimera, N.S. Paul, Tyler James, David Lucarelli, Terrance Grace, & Pauline Creeden. Oh, and me.

Best of luck to you, I’m extremely peeved that I don’t get to enter it myself!

When is a break not a break?

Chronicles of Mar word count: Unchanged for two weeks

Yes, that’s right, I’ve not written a word in two weeks. Well, apart from those ones. And those ones. Argh, they keep coming out of my fingers. Stop! I’m on a break!

I say I’m on a break. That’s not quite true. I’ve taken the rather radical decision to redo all of my covers, but to actually learn how to use photoshop and all that jazz in order to do that. So, for two weeks I’ve been watching endless hours of people showing me how to do really simple things with pictures and then getting really cross with myself for not being able to immediately do the same as them. It’s a lot of fun. I have been making some progress, however, (as evidenced by the picture above which made me giggle incessantly for a good ten minutes) and should have some shiny new covers in the next few weeks, just in time for the second anniversary of Blood on the Motorway’s publications.

Blimey, two years, eh?

Also, I’ve not been completely neglecting the Chronicles. As I mentioned before, before my break I was closing in on finishing the first draft of the first three books in my new series. I took this approach because I wanted to get well into the story and see where it was heading before going back to the start to rework it from a lump of coal into… a much nicer lump of coal. 

These three books will form the first part of a trilogy of trilogies, a work of around one million words that will take in disparate threads of genetic manipulation, dystopian corporate rule, artificial intelligence, terrorism, and telepaths. Oh, and alien sea monsters. It has, at its heart, a nefarious organisation known as Sunset, and I’ve been toying with naming the nine books in the series based around this.

So, instead of working on the books themselves, I’ve been naming books, some of which won’t be ready for at least three years. Because that’s the kind of thing you do when you’re procrastinating and its hot outside. It turns out, though, that there are quite a few options. So, here’s just a few possible titles for the individual books in the Chronicles of Mar series:

Sunrise, Sunset, Sunbeam, Sundial, Sundog, Suntan, Sunray, Sundown, Sunburn, Sundered, Sunbird, Sunland, Sundown, Sunshade, Sunstone, Sunscald, Sunkiller, Sunshine, Sunburst, Sunlight, Sunstruck, Sunflowers, Sunglasses.

Okay, maybe some of those don’t exactly scream dystopian science fiction, but I think there’s enough there to be going on with. Which ones take your fancy, or are there options that I’m missing out on?

Problems I know. Problems I don't.

Chronicles of Mar Word Count: 290,968

As that total creeps ever higher, I’ve been thinking more and more about the next steps for this series. Once I cross the 300k mark, the Chronicles of Mar will be a complete trilogy, albeit in rough first draft form only. It’s a trilogy that takes in disparate threads of genetic manipulation, dystopian corporate rule, artificial intelligence, terrorism, and telepaths. Oh, and alien sea monsters. That’s quite a lot more going on than ever happened in the Blood on the Motorway series.

That full trilogy amounted to just shy of 240,000 words, during which I managed to encapsulate full character arcs for five main characters and take in the complete destruction of humanity. With this series, I’ve already got more words, and yet I’m only about a third of the way through the main story. That's right, this is only the first trilogy in a trilogy of trilogies, so the whole series should end up at roughly ONE MILLION WORDS.

Still, in roughly 20,000 more words time I’ll have finished the first draft of the full first trilogy, which is a good time to take a break from it and review what I have. I already know about some of the huge problems that are buried in there — some characters that are really not yet fully fleshed out, some plot points that don’t hit with the oomph that they’re going to need, and some huge issues with the world building — all to be expected when you’re flying by the seat of your pants and making it up as you go along, which is pretty much what I’ve been doing so far.

What worries me more is not the problems I know about, it’s the problems I don’t. These, by their very nature, are tricky little bastards, because I don’t know what they are. Maybe there’s a nest of spiders hanging out in the second book, or a plot hole the size of an ice moon lurking midway through the third. Maybe, after all this, I’ll discover that the 300,000 words I’ve written are just endless receptions of the phrase ‘all work and no play makes Paul a dull boy’.

Still, as I bear down on being able to write ‘The End’ on the third book, I’m quite excited to see what I’ve got. It could be dribbling nonsense. It could be a breathtaking work of unparalleled genius. Who knows? I mean, it’s probably not, because of all the problems I mentioned earlier. Either way, I’m looking forward to getting under the hood to find out what I’ve got.

Blood on the Motorway: An apocalyptic trilogy of murder and stale sandwiches is out now in ebook and print from Amazon and all other good bookstores. You can get the first book free by joining my mailing list.