From a Short Story to a New Release, Seeking the Dark.

[image error] The Girl On The Bus

If you have been following my Mr C series you will know that I joined a local college in hope to understand how English grammar worked. The picture above shows my first attempt at writing a short story back in 2004 before the college course, Brush Up on your English. At that point in time all that I knew about how to write was from what I had learnt from reading ‘how to‘ books.

The Girl On The Bus story I took into work and showed it to my work colleague and friend, Lisa. My heart raced as I watched her face closely to see her reaction. Would she laugh at my effort? When at last she looked up to my surprise she said, “I want to know more about the character.”

This led me to write a 129K word novel called ‘We the Ancient Ones’.

I had no idea how to write a novel when I started it. Questions raced around my head. When did you know a chapter was finished? How did you write a sentence? The list was endless.

This was the reason I attended the college course and was so focused on learning. I found it very frustrating never being sure whether what I was writing was the correct way. Of course in those early days I did submit and unsurprisingly it was rejected, but I did receive some positive feedback too. Comments like there’s a story here, but it’s too wordy. It has atmosphere but needs editing.

I never gave up and stay focused no matter what happened.

I dropped the title ‘We The Ancient Ones’ and for a while it became the ‘Seventh Commandment.’ I tried submitting again. The ‘Seventh Commandment’ was dropped as I felt it was too religious, and went for the ‘Souls of Angels as this was more in keep with a fantasy-type novel. Then one day while listening to Noel Edmonds talking on a radio show, and he said the line, “It was like seeking in the dark.”

I have no recollection of what he was talking about, but I knew I had found my title. Seeking the Dark. After years of editing and rejections I set the novel to one side and moved on. After writing three more novels, I finally found a home for one of them when Stone Angels was published.

While working on Stone Angels I learnt how to be brave and to take a red pen to things that really don’t move the story on. Once the novel was published I went back to Seeking the Dark and set to work deleting and rewriting, making the story much stronger and darker. Also I focused on just what the main plot line was and who was best to tell the story.

The Final Cut Can Be Yours If You Click On This Link

Today you get the change to read Seeking the Dark for yourself and it is now live. Yes, my journey to this point has been a long one but it has only just began. The run is far from over, and I still do have ambitions with my writing. I hope I will continue to grow as a writer and tell stronger and more powerful stories in the future.

Seeking the Dark is now available on Amazon, so please do check it out.

Here’s the book trailer and the link to Amazon wherever you are in the world: https://mybook.to/seekingthedark