Project Hush-Hush – Event, Rewriting and … Acting?

So, what have I been doing the last few days? Well, first a few words on Project Hush-Hush.

How The Forgotten Son opens is hugely important, more so than usual for a book. The opening lines are so vital to the success or failure of any novel, but when it’s the first of a new series of a licensed project, those first few lines, indeed the whole prologue, is even more important. And so the publisher and I have been discussing this opening, and it occurred to us that I am in a unique position to rewrite a piece of history — or rather add something new to a piece of history that means a lot to a lot of people.  Yup, this is one of those entries where I can’t reveal too much about the content of the writing — the scene is too big and too integral to the concept of the series that to reveal its contents would spoil so much. So, you’ll have to just bear with me and believe me when I say that reworking the prologue is a unique thrill that may not ever be one I experience again.

I was showing the first line to two friends yesterday, both of whom are big fans (of what? Well, that would be telling), and only one of them understood the in-joke of that very first line and just what it meant. Just goes to show there are different levels of fans. I’m confident though that the majority of fans will get it, and that one line will set the tone for the rest of the series.

In other news I was at another Candy Jar Book Festival event yesterday, this time discussing ‘monsters and mirrors’ with fellow author Benjamin Burford-Jones. It was an interesting little talk. Not many turned up, but we did get an interesting few including a couple of kids who had all kinds of random questions to ask about monsters in fiction. My favourite part was the girl’s answer to my question, ‘what monsters do you like best in Doctor Who?‘. The answer? Why, the cake monster. Of course! (Must be an episode I’ve never seen!) During this event I also did a little bit of acting! Sort of. Ben was going to read an extract from his book, Beware of the Mirror Man, but it soon became obvious that he doesn’t have the most involving reading voice so I happened upon an idea. The section he chose features two characters — Sophie and Ell. Now, Ell is a mimic who happens to have a cockney voice, and as the title of the blog suggests I am something of a Londoner (albeit one who was born in Wales). So we acted out the scene, with me providing the cockney-voice of Ell. Which was great as Ell by far got the best lines in that scene, and we got a couple of giggles from the kids. Job done! 😉

Next up,as well as the ongoing research for The Forgotten Son I have the proofed version of Sharon Bidwell’s The Draco Eye to go through, and looking through the proofs of my forthcoming short story collection. All the stories in the latter have been published individually by Untreed Reads Publishing over the last four years, but they’re putting them into one all-new volume for release in a couple of months. So look out for that one!

Now, it’s time to head back to find out how John James is dealing with the creature that he’s discovered in the back garden…

Project Hush-Hush – Additions and Tour

First up, been doing a little bit of work on Project Hush-Hush today. Adding a new character to the mix, since I felt something was missing from the twins’ plot, something to ground it to the bigger picture and the ’60s. And so Charles Watts has joined the twins, now named Louis and Owain. I was planning on getting on with the next chapter, since I’m looking forward to upping the creep factor by introducing Mary and her bizarre journey, but first I need to re-jig chapter one a little. Which includes renaming a couple of characters so that their names more clearly reflect the year in which they were born — no point given them a name that probably wasn’t used in, say, 1930.

In other news, my fellow author, Sharon Bidwell, has taken up the gauntlet and added her own Writing Process entry to the ongoing blog tour. Please do pop by to see what she has to say about her own processes. She even has this to say about me; ‘Andy is mostly a plotter. When we co-authored a book together I found it a little exhausting and it wasn’t just because we were stepping in at short notice and had limited time. Andy is fast and he tends to know exactly where he wants to go.’ Which is nice. And may even be true. 🙂

For the sake of context, let me explain. Sharon is an author I always wanted to have write for Space: 1889 & Beyond and, with a little encouragement, she agreed and wrote A Fistful of Dust. In fact, her first draft of that book came in before any other manuscript for the second season, even though it was to be fifth in the run. Along the way disaster struck and I lost the author of the second book in the season, and with time running out I needed to turn around a second book and quick. Re-enter Sharon. Since she had a good handle on the universe I sweet-talked her into helping me write the second book, Mundus Cerialis, which we did in ten days. I think for Sharon it was a whole new pace of writing, but she secretly enjoyed it and was amazed at how quick it turned around. I was so impressed, and in her debt, that I made her write another book. I’m nice like that. But to give her a little incentive, I allowed her the joy of bringing dragons into the Space: 1889 & Beyond universe — she LOVES dragons! How could she refuse? The result of this will be seen next month when her novel, The Draco Eye, is released.