After months of hard work, battling the imposter syndrome voices, and leaning on an incredible team of collaborators, I’ve finally finished ALL the edits for my second book – Hide and Seek. Now, it’s the mad scramble to forge all the small pieces into place for publication: covers, interior layouts, interior page details, ISBNs, LCCN, and copyright. Yes, it’s a lot, especially since I’m doing all of this myself. In addition to the title of “author”, I’m also the designer, the research assistant, editor, layout specialist, marketer, and publisher.
I love the beginning to end control over my work that it gives me, but it means many long hours, lots of tea, and more than a few sleepless nights while my brain rattles through completion lists.
Once this book is finally published, it will mark a first for me: This will be my first thoroughly original work to be published. My first book, The Tree House, was based on a short story I had written ten years back. My third book will be a rework of my first attempt to write a book, back in the early 2000s – it ended disastrously. I have to thank my wife, Francesca, for this one. I pitched a bunch of ideas to her, and this was the one she chose for my next project. The story went through more than a few iterations, before things began to click. I have to say, I’m very proud of the end result.
As an author, we never feel our work on a project is ever truly done, we just move on (sometimes reluctantly) to the next book. This new book is a standalone novel and isn’t connected to my previous book. Hide and Seek is like a queer version of Dresden Files, mixing heavily with Darkest Hour, and The King’s Speech. The story ended up being challenging because it’s based on actual history (pre-war London 1939), and includes actual historical figures. My research for this book was far more extensive than any previous undertaking, and made me question my choices more than a few times along the way. As the saying goes, The Devil is in the details.
To my great relief, laying out the interior of the book ended up being far easier than my journey with The Tree House. This time I had a solid template to work from, plus the experience of my multitude of mistakes with my first book. Though I haven’t tackled my Kindle layout, yet. That will be the true test of my mettle.
One of the biggest battles I faced with this book was timelines. Because the story lived in a historical setting, I needed to pay close attention to events, people, and places to make sure everything fit into the history that already existed – neatly altered by my fictional narrative. In the very early days of this book, I ditched the original antagonist because of timeline failures, and it radically recharted the course of my writing – for the better.
If things go as planned, Hide and Seek will end up of being the first book in a series of adventures for Edmund and Giles – The Crafter Chronicles. Like Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files, or Kevin Hearne’s Iron Druid Chronicles each book will be a standalone adventure tied to a persistent world.