This week my publishers asked me to send them 50 words describing how I felt about writing a spin off series for Geraldine Steel's sergeant. This was for a press release about COLD SACRIFICE, the first in my new Ian Peterson series.
'Well, that won't be difficult,' I thought. Off went my response: 'No worries. It will be with you this afternoon.' After all, to someone who habitually writes 2,000 words a day, 50 words should be 'a walk in the park'. (Excuse the cliché but it seems appropriate. My debut CUT SHORT, which was inspired by a (literal) walk in the park, has recently been published in French with the title (in English) MURDER PARK.)
Not only is the typing relatively fast, I write "psychologically acute" crime novels (to quote Marcel Berlins, writing in The Times.)
So, I write fast and seem to have the ability to worm my way inside my characters' minds ("taking readers into the darkest recesses of the human psyche" according to a review by Barry Forshaw.)
Yet I'm sitting here, struggling to find 50 words to describe my own thoughts and feelings...
It seems that my fingers slide effortlessly over the keyboard when I'm writing fiction. (Well, relatively effortlessly - I'm making a point here.) But when called on to write something 'real' I find it's not so straightforward. What should I say? What if I get this wrong?
There's only one way to tackle this. I'll have to treat myself as a character in a book..... a character who is an author. Her publisher asks her to write a spin off series based on one of her characters, Ian Peterson. How does she feel? "...wildly excited at the opportunity to explore Ian Peterson's future... "
COLD SACRIFICE will be published in September in print, and is scheduled to be available as an ebook this month.
2 comments:
Maybe just put yourself into the mind of the character whose new stories you want to tell.
Exactly, Charles,only this wasn't a story... !
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