ideas

This Week I Had Five WIPS Vying For Attention In My Head

~ ChanAtkins ~ 5 Comments

I Need More Me’s!

Image by TyliJura from Pixabay

If you’ve followed my blog for a while you’ll probably know that I find it impossible to work on just one writing project at a time. Ideally, I would love to. One story idea, one plot, one set of characters, one job to do! I envy writers whose minds work like that. It must feel very in control.

It’s never that way with me. There is always the book ready to be published that needs quotes posting, cover sorting, final edits and so on. There is always the current priority work-in-progress and sometimes that’s a series, not a standalone. And there are always the future books, the ideas, all in various stages!

It’s been like that this week, and then some.

First, I am trying to draw attention to The Mess Of Us which came out on Valentines Day. That means promoting it as best I can and creating graphics of quotes from the book and reviews as they come in.

Second, I am preparing my next book for release at the end of the year. I need to sort out the cover, finalise the blurb and send it to my editor. Recently I read it through on my kindle to pick up any lingering typos or plot holes and found it to be a very clean read. But it still needs that professional edit and proofread. I hope to release The Dark Finds You towards the end of the year.

Third, I’ve been adding stories and poems to my next anthology Dirty Feet. I’ve no idea when I will release this, but every now and then I add new bits and pieces to it, so it’s always on the go.

Next, I’ve been working on my official work-in-progress, Black Hare Valley. It was never meant to be a series but book one inspired two more books and then I had the idea of a diary style companion book. That’s what I am writing at the moment, and once that is finished, I will be going through each book in the series with a fine toothed comb, ensuring there are no plot holes and a clear timeline that makes sense!

But as well as all this I started getting the urge to create a graphic novel style version of Black Hare Valley. Don’t ask me why. I can’t even draw very well! I haven’t done anything about this. But the urge is there and it’s very strong!

Plus, I’ve been thinking a lot about which book I will work on once Black Hare Valley is complete and decided it will be The Seventh Child, a family mystery thriller. This idea has been building for a while, and I already had the whole plot, the location and the character bios in a notebook. A while back I wrote the first chapter, because, why not? This week, this book has been screaming at me to get on with it! Please, someone tell it it has to wait!

On top of that another book idea keeps growing and swelling and this week I figured out exactly how I will tell it. Anya and Cody Start The Apocalypse is an idea that came to me in bits and pieces with the characters showing up first. I eventually started a notebook to keep track of things and soon had character bios and locations and a loose plot. That plot has since tightened up but I was still unsure of how to tell the story. Then I figured it out. Epistolary style! The book will be written by another narrator who is writing a dissertation project on Anya and Cody after their story is over. It will be told by the narrator compiling diaries, letters, news reports and social media posts in order to explain what happened. I’ve written diary style books before, (The Mess Of Me and The Mess Of Us, plus the companion diary for Black Hare Valley) but I’ve never tried anything like this so I am really, really excited! And I want to do it now!

But it has to wait! I will carry on adding bits to the notebook of course. But that doesn’t mean it will shut up.

My head is full of all these stories all the time. I wish I could create some extra me’s or some extra hands to get it all done. I think I will feel better once I finish the Black Hare Valley diary book. I can then fully concentrate on getting the whole series ready for publication in 2026. I would love to have the first book ready to go in January 2026, for example. The rest of the books will follow one by one throughout that year, and in that time I will be busy writing The Seventh Child.

Then it will be Anya and Cody’s turn…

What is wrong with me?

Peeling Back The Layers of Black Hare Valley

~ ChanAtkins ~ 1 Comment

Writing the companion books is revealing secrets and aiding the development of my main book’s characters.

Image by 👀 Mabel Amber, who will one day from Pixabay

It is official.

I am in love with Black Hare Valley.

I have created a universe I am in awe of and addicted to. It has grown and evolved into something far more beautiful and complex than I ever expected, and I am enjoying myself as a writer immensely.

The story has grown from the map me and my son created for fun during lockdown, into what will be a three book series jumping backwards and forwards in time. When my son and I created Black Hare Valley’s physical form, I had no idea what characters would emerge from it, and at that point I had no plot either. I knew I wanted it to be a creepy little town with very dark secrets, and I knew I wanted my main characters to be teenage misfits forced together to try and solve the mystery of a missing boy. But that was it.

Four years later and I cannot believe how it has grown. It seems to have a life of its own right now and I am just along for the ride. Not a day goes by when I don’t come across a secret, a reveal, or an aspect of a character I had not been aware of before. There is a lot of work to do here, but I feel like I am building something very special.

So, what do I mean by peeling back the layers?

When you start to write a book, you usually start with a location, (I had that in great detail) characters, (they started to come to me one by one before I began writing) and a plot. It was the plot I was lacking, but one day I got the first chapter in my head. I knew how the book started. I knew which characters I could introduce by writing these scenes and I knew that as soon as I started writing them, it would take off by itself. And it did.

Once I had those first few chapters and had introduced the main characters, Jesse, Paddy, Jaime, Ralph and Willow, then everything else just flowed. I still didn’t know exactly what was going to happen or why. I knew one of them would go missing and the rest would team up to try and find out why. I knew they would come up against a sinister neighbourhood watch committee made up of the fearsome Sergeant Mayfield, Mayor Margaret Sumner, Vicar Greg Roberts, Head-teacher Edward Bishop, librarian Eugenie Spires and a few more. A few chapters later I knew that my committee of adults in power were very dangerous indeed.

More began to unravel as I wrote the first draft, but even at the end of it, I still didn’t have half of what I do today. I knew the committee were ancient and had been stealing and potentially killing children for centuries in order to preserve their immortality and the town’s, but I didn’t know why or how. That all came much, much later.

With the first, second and even third draft of the first book set in 1996, I had the bare bones. The characters were growing and evolving, the location was spot on, and the how’s and why’s were starting to come together.

Somewhere along the line I began to wonder if these characters own parents had experienced similar things when they were teenagers in the 1960s. At first, I just rewrote some of the scenes with the parents to try and hint that they had also investigated the committee and also grieved a missing child, but of course, once I had that in motion, more and more stories began to rise up. The layers were unpeeling one by one.

These revelations made the 1996 book much better but also set in motion ideas for a smaller, companion book set in 1966. That then made me wonder about 2026… Which of my 1996 characters would still be in the town? What would they remember? While things appear to be solved at the end of book one, are they really?

This was incredibly exciting and led me to where I am now.

Book one (1996) begins on May Day with a child going missing. A group of unlikely teens then band together to try to find the missing boy and in the process reveal dark and dangerous secrets about their beautiful town. They also discover that children have been going missing in Black Hare Valley for a long time. Every thirty years in fact… By the end of the book the group have figured almost everything out, found out what happened to missing Paddy and fought back, to some degree. Everything is calm. They’ve got what they wanted but they still don’t know everything…

Book two (1996) also begins on May Day with another child going missing, this time the May Queen. Her sister, Angie Radley, joins forces with some other teens to try and look for her and in the process they also discover some very strange and frightening things about their town. These teens are directly related to the teens in 1996. Angie Radley is the mother of main character Jesse Archer in 1996. Nicky Archer is Jesse’s father. Lizzie Wilkins is Willow’s mother. Frankie Maxwell is Ralph’s father. Some of these characters are still alive in 1996 but they are not much help to that group of teens… By the end of this book, we have had some reveals and the group have been split up and discouraged from investigating further. There is also a reveal in this book about the character who is the most to blame for the missing children…

Book three (2026) also starts on May Day, and we meet Lila Archer, Jesse Archer’s niece and Nicky Archer’s granddaughter. She’s up to no good and soon involves herself when another child goes missing. Some of our 1996 teens are still alive. Some are not. Some of them remember what happened in ’96 and some do not. But in order to solve the mystery once and for all and put a permanent stop to the committee, they must remember what happened in ’96 and ’66…

That’s where I am right now – with the whole of book three pretty much planned out and just waiting to be written. Once I have done the messy first draft of that I’ll return to editing the first book…

Exciting times!

I have now finished the rough first draft of 1996 and I am almost half way through 2026. I know where I am going and how to get there! It feels amazing…

It really does feel like one basic idea revealed itself to be simply one layer upon a multitude of connections. I am so excited about this series!

My Entire To-Write List Is In Action!

~ ChanAtkins ~ 6 Comments
Image by Fathromi Ramdlon from Pixabay

In January 2022 I wrote a blog about how I handle having such a long to-write list. Part of coping with so many book ideas is allocating a notebook for each one, so that I can jot down title, blurb ideas, plots, character bios and so on. At that point I was putting the final touches to The Day The Earth Turned series, and the Fortune’s Well trilogy co-written with Sim Sansford. The trilogy is now out and the first book in The Day The Earth Turned series is also out! The other books in the series are also finished and waiting for their release dates.

In the meantime, I’ve been doing my usual crazy thing of writing/editing/jotting ideas and thinking about multiple writing projects at the same time! No change there then, but I don’t worry about it anymore. It’s just the way my mind works.

However, I did suddenly realise the other day that my entire to-write list is now in action. Every book is in some state of progress and even better than that – I have not had any new ideas!!!!

Awesome!

I feel like I can now relax and enjoy getting these books finished and released. They will certainly keep me busy over the next few years!

To keep you updated, here is a list of my to-write list and the stage each one is currently at (I’ve listed them in the order I expect to release them in):

At Night We Played In The Road – the spin-off book from The Boy With The Thorn In His Side series. Works as a standalone but does give spoilers for part 5 of The Boy series… It’s written, it’s had six drafts, its been to beta readers and I’ve responded to feedback. It’s currently with my editor and I’ve already worked on a few structural edits she suggested. I plan to release around May 2024.

The Mess Of Us – long awaited sequel to my debut novel The Mess Of Me. It’s had five drafts and I’m just about to start draft six before sending it to beta readers! Hope to release summer 2024.

The Dark Finds You – the unexpected crossover book that ends the stories in The Boy With The Thorn In His Side universe – brings characters from The Mess Of Me/Us, the Holds End trilogy and Elliot Pie’s Guide To Human Nature together in one storyline with Danny from The Boy series… It’s had five drafts and I absolutely love it. Probably the easiest most addictive book I’ve ever written. I hope to release end of autumn 2024.

Black Hare Valley – written in long-hand in five notebooks, wrote ‘The End’ about a year ago and haven’t touched it since, but I will be diving into the second draft of this once the books above are completely finished and ready for release.

Diary of the Undead – started in a notebook a few years ago then put aside, I recently picked it up again and decided to type up what I had. This led to a few more chapters but I then put it aside to concentrate on everything else!

We hate The Cool Kids – still awaiting a second draft and it’s been about five years now, but I’ll get to it when I can.

The 7th Child – in progress because I have the whole plot nailed down, plus the characters are evolving on a daily basis and I’m adding bits of plot etc too. I’ve also written the first chapter.

The Few – a series to cowrite with Sim Sansford – we recently kicked this off with the first few chapters done!

And that’s it. All the books waiting in notebooks and all the books in my head all in some state of action. I’m really pleased about this but do you know what I’m most pleased about??

Not having any new ideas!!!

The People In My Head

~ ChanAtkins ~ 1 Comment

Being a writer means spending a lot of time observing people, writing down ideas, getting plot twists hit you in the middle of the night, hours leaning over a laptop keyboard pounding away and just as many hours staring helplessly at a blank screen. It also means editing, revising, proofreading and then all those on repeat. But one aspect of being a writer is a little less talked about and that is the phenomenon of having people living inside your head. And it really does feel like they live there. They don’t go away. Not for me anyway, not ever. All the books I have released have characters who at some point in my life have crawled inside my brain and set up camp. They’ve ignored the fact I am already working on a book and they have whispered and nudged and shouted and whined until they got their turn. You would think that once I have given them attention and written their story they would leave me alone, but you would be wrong. They stay there forever and sometimes pipe up again with ideas for a sequel… Writing their story does seem to shut them up a bit though. They seem happy enough to step back and take a back seat for a while. I guess they get bustled out of the way by all the desperate new ones. I have all my old characters in my head, and then I have the new ones too. These are the really noisy, insistent ones. They all want to be next. They overlap and jump the queue and keep me awake at night. They make it hard for me to concentrate on what people in real life are doing or saying! They distract me and overwhelm me and ultimately, they don’t stop talking until they feel they have been heard. So, as well as the old ones, these are some of the new characters I currently have living in my head. You’ll get to meet them all properly in time, but here is a sneak peek, if you like. Maybe introducing them to you will give me a little respite from them!

Hello Johnny – I know you are still there, still lurking, hovering, muttering in the background. I know you have bad asthma and are massively introverted so highly unlikely (at least in your dad’s eyes) to survive a zombie apocalypse – but once you are forced to move and act, you’re going to prove them all wrong aren’t you? You’re going to become a total bad-ass and a hero. Don’t worry, I’ve got the story, all of it, some of it in the notebook and the rest of it in my head because you’ve been very vocal lately. You’ve been through a lot already and you are a survivor. You are secretly in love with Billie, the girl in the cloak you met on the road – and you feel like its important to put down every single undead human even if it means risking your life to do so. A part of you enjoys all this and its that which keeps you awake at night. You are trying to get back home back to where you started, to wrestle it back from those who forced you out. Because you can do it now. You are not afraid. I’m listening, I am. Keep talking, keep moving, keep telling me your journey.

Reuben, Gus, Chess, George, Charlotte.…Gosh there are a lot of you. A whole community, in fact. Picking up the pieces after the adults were wiped out. I’ve left you alone for a while. I needed a break. But you’ve been creeping back, haven’t you? Letting me know that you are still there, hanging out in the remains of the old world, clinging to what you can, surviving, together. I love you all. I can hear you. It’s nearly time for you all to be heard.

Jesse, Willow, Jaime, Ralph, Paddy… yep, I can hear you too. I tried to shut you out for a long time but you guys really started hammering on the door recently didn’t you? I had you, I had your creepy town Black Hare Valley, but I didn’t really have the plot. But you guys started helping me with that and here we are… I’ve got the end in sight now, I know what you have to do, who you have to take down, why and how. It’s going to be quite a fight but you guys are stronger than you think. We’ve still got a lot of work to do as you come alive inside my head. So, keep talking. Knock back. Whisper in the night. Speak up on long walks. Let me know what you want and we’ll keep pushing to the finish line, I promise.

Alfie and Tom… You’ve been getting some attention recently. I’ve been plodding on, listening to you, looking back into your past to see you as children, to see what shaped you to become the men you are today. It’s been interesting, and traumatic, but we are getting there. Sometimes just a paragraph a day, sometimes more. You’ve been in my head for years! It was when I was writing the fifth book in The Boy With The Thorn In His Side series that you came forward, shyly suggesting your own storyline, your own place in that last book. You became so real, so much a part of that world, that I just had to give you your own book, your own time, your own back stories. I’m getting to know you better and I like that.

Lou… I know, I know, I started your sequel, then left it, started it then left it…. I’m sorry! All these other people started showing up, demanding their own time, desperate to be heard. I’ve got it all though, so don’t worry – I know what happens and I am sorry – It’s going to be another tough ride for you, maybe your toughest yet. You’ll grow up in this sequel, both you and Joe. Keep talking, I am still listening. You might just have to shout a bit louder than the rest of them!

There are others too. Once who don’t even have names yet… They wander in from time to time, muttering and shaking their heads. They’re not loud enough yet but one day they will be.