Progress Report on Adversary – Hive Mind 5

As a child, I believed books were written from the beginning to the end. In fact, books can progress in many ways. Forwards, backwards, with periodic standstills, and it’s reported that Harper Lee once threw the manuscript of To Kill A Mockingbird out of the window into the snow.

Adversary originally hit a morass of problems as it neared the halfway point. I took a break to let my thought clarify, and that break turned out to be far longer than intended. Due to long Covid and bereavement, the creative side of my brain couldn’t handle sorting out the issues of Adversary, so I had to let it write the Drago Tell Dramis 2781 series instead.

After the release of Sol 2781 in July, I picked up the partly written Adversary. I’ve now done the initial surgery to solve a plot overload problem, followed by an extensive reworking of the plotlines. The book is now in a healthy state, and progressing in a generally forwards direction, with Amber and her team facing mounting problems from both inside and outside the Hive.

I will be giving another progress report on Adversary in the middle of October. At that point, both the amount of work needed to complete the book, and the likely complications of real life, should be a lot clearer.