rewriting

A Week of Obsessive Editing

~ ChanAtkins ~ 3 Comments

I just want it done!

cover for the anthology my students have written! Links coming soon! Image is mine

I blogged last week about the endless editing facing me after writing so many books and having them at various stages of drafts. This always seems to happen to me! I write and write and write, start new books when I have not yet published other books, and then at some point I inevitably end up with a lot of editing jobs… A seemingly endless list of books and projects to edit.

The thing is, I might just be as obsessive about editing as I am about writing. It has utterly consumed me this week and I’ve managed to tick off two of the biggest jobs I had.

Something Happened In Lakeside View is an anthology of connected short stories penned by the children I work with and this week I finished the final edits. I am now in the process of setting it up for publication and hopefully this time next week I will have buy links ready for anyone interested!

Here is the blurb by the way:

Welcome to Lakeside View, a pretty little town much like any other. Or is it?

Scratch under the surface and you will find a place full of secrets and shadows.

A place full of darkness, magic, ancient curses and hidden horrors. Who would live in a town like this? Many people have come and gone and some have left behind their testimonies.

What happened in Lakeside View? Read on to find out.

This is an anthology of stories and poems written by the young people who attend creative writing clubs with me at Chasing Driftwood Writing Group.

It felt like a huge weight had lifted when I declared that editing job done! In fact, the whole project has been very time consuming to put together so I should, in theory, have some more time on my hands for a bit.

The second big editing job was going through my editor’s edits on Black Hare Valley Book 1: 1996. I also got this done this week! I am now doing a final proofread/check through on my Kindle to mop up any lingering typos. Again, it feels like a weight has been lifted with that big job done.

These two books are priority for getting ready to publish or setting up to publish, so that will now take precedence over any other editing jobs I have. However, I am still slowly going through the second draft, or read-through draft, of The Dark Finds You Part 3. I still have a lot of misgivings about this one… But reading through and making little changes is helping me figure out the problems it might have!

So, on it goes… But at least the big ones are done for now!

When it comes to endless editing that just cannot be put off, I tend to just get my head down and crack on with it. I’ve had my Kindle with me at all times this week, so I have been editing in the car while I wait to go into work, and I have been editing in the evening, and then editing again before bed when normally I would be reading or watching TV. There’s simply no other way to get it done other than just get on with it!

The Dark Finds You Is Out Now!!

~ ChanAtkins ~ 2 Comments

And is it about to become a trilogy??

Image is mine https://books2read.com/u/mKjewB

Last Friday I released by 24th book, gritty crime thriller, The Dark Finds You. This book about dark pasts converging in the battle to find a missing teenager, can be read and enjoyed as a standalone, but it also fits into a bigger universe of connected characters and plots. If you’ve read The Boy With The Thorn In His Side series, The Holds End Trilogy, The Mess of Me, The Mess of Us, Elliot Pie’s Guide To Human Nature or At Night We Played In The Road, you will find some familiar faces and locations in The Dark Finds You!

The idea for this novel came to me when writing The Mess Of Us and At Night We Played In The Road. Those books already fitted into a connected universe, as At Night We Played In The Road is technically a spin-off from The Boy With The Thorn In His Side series, and The Mess of Us and Me are set in the same universe and location. These books also had connecting plotlines with drug abuse, drug running, music and community being common themes.

The Holds End trilogy, essentially a murder mystery centred around enigmatic teenage singer, Bill Robinson, also takes place in the same universe and has similar plotlines converging.

This is why The Dark Finds You was so easy to write! All these characters had already converged, their storylines connected and their locations crossed over. The plot of a missing boy was then used to pull them all together and the plan was to end this universe for good. Tie up their individual storylines as well as the missing boy plot. I wrote The Dark Finds You over six weeks back in 2023 and it’s had to wait this long to get its release date. It is now available in ebook and paperback across multiple platforms.

So, what next? Well, in checking The Dark Finds You paperback proof for any errors just before Christmas, I suddenly got some new ideas and a sequel exploded in my head. There were a few things I left open at the end of the book and that crack was enough to let the ideas seep in. I had the whole plot within a day and simply could not resist writing it! Over Christmas I had three weeks off work and the book just poured out of me in a total of four weeks. Of course, that’s a rough first draft and it needs a lot of work!

This week I dived into my second draft of The Dark Finds You – Part Two. This is what I call a read-through draft, (where I remind myself of what I wrote!) and a timeline draft, (where I set out the timeline of events in a notebook to ensure there are no inconsistencies.) This didn’t take long to complete and by the end of it I had some things I wanted to change.

A few minor things to add and embellish and one major thing to change. This means that draft three which starts now, will be a rewrite more than an edit.

And then, guess what happened?

My rewrite ideas, which undoubtedly make the whole novel more twisty and unpredictable, led me to ideas for a possible part three…

Noooooooo!

I was meant to be releasing the Black Hare Valley series this year…

I have delayed that for the moment because it feels right to fully concentrate on this potential trilogy and get it done. I won’t say it will end the universe forever because that’s probably not going to happen, is it? It seems I love this world too much.

I am not 100% certain I will write a part three and make The Dark Finds You a trilogy… but the changes I make to part two will certainly leave that as a possibility.

In the meantime, I have got to crack on with this third draft/rewrite and also not neglect to market the first book!

As usual, thanks for joining me hear in my tiny corner of the internet! Thank you for your support in 2025 and for sticking with me into 2026!

Writing and Life Goals for 2026!

~ ChanAtkins ~ 2 Comments

What do I hope to achieve in the year ahead?

Image by Wilfried Pohnke from Pixabay

Hello everyone! I hope you have had a truly happy and peaceful holiday season and may I wish you a very happy New Year! My last post saw me checking the goals I set myself at the start of 2025 and exploring the reality of whether I met them or not! I failed two, achieved six, and half-achieved two, which I thought was pretty good.

So, let’s not hang about. What do I want to achieve in writing and in life in 2026?

  1. Publish The Dark Finds You in January 2006! – This won’t be hard to achieve as the pre-order is already set up for the 9th January. I’m giving myself an easy start…
  2. Start final/final edits for Black Hare Valley Book 1 and release it May 1st 2026: I really hope I achieve this as I want this book to be released on 1st May because May Day is a very important day in the Black Hare Valley universe! Book 1 is with my editor right now so fingers crossed…
  3. Release another anthology written by the kids I work with – Not long after publishing The World You Gave Us, we launched another collaborative writing project where all the stories and poems had to be set in a strange town called Lakeside View. At the time of writing I am waiting for a handful of longer stories to come in and hope to have all editing and formatting done by the start of February…
  4. Finish The Dark Finds You sequel – This should be easy. I am almost at the end of the first draft of the book that wasn’t meant to happen. I would like to get this ready to go to the editor in 2026 with a possible release date of autumn 2026…
  5. Continue to edit/rework the rest of the Black Hare Valley series: At the moment I’m not sure how close I want to release each of the 5 books, so there is no major goal being set for publication after book 1… However, I do need to keep working on the rest of them and prioritise this series over everything else!
  6. Start the rewrite of The 7th Child – I recently finished the first draft of this family mystery drama and hated it by the end. I know how to fix it though and it needs a major rewrite. I was all ready to dive into this when the sequel for The Dark Finds You suggested itself! However, I really want to start the rewrite at some point this year…
  7. Continue to stick to Substack and make a few changes, and continue to stick with Medium: It’s always hard figuring out where and how to prioritise your time as a writer. Is it writing for other platforms that might make you money and/or improve your visibility? Or is just writing your own books? I’ve enjoyed both Medium and Substack in 2025 and I plan to stick with them with no particular pressure to do better. Just to have fun. I do have a few changes in mind for Substack though.
  8. Have my best year in the garden ever!!: Oh, I hope so. This might be my most important goal actually. I have worked really hard through the autumn preparing the vegetable patch for the spring and summer and I feel more determined than ever to do really well. I also see it as an emergency. We can’t rely on governments to address or slow down climate change, or help us adapt to it! I am really concerned about rising food prices and food security in general. The best thing we can all do is at least grow something. I also plan to get more ducks and chickens, plant more fruit trees and bushes and lots more herbs!
  9. Complete a reading challenge: I haven’t done one in ages but an author I know created one on Storygraph where you have to read a book starting with each letter of the alphabet. This seemed fun and simple so I signed up! Let’s hope I manage to complete the alphabet!
  10. Get better at sketching: This is partly because I dearly want each chapter of each Black Hare Valley book to start with a small ink sketch and partly because I used to love drawing as a child and it’s been fun to reclaim it. I did basic drawings for the chapters I serialised but they all need to be much better for publication! I hope to find a good YouTube tutorial that will help me…

So, there you have it! A real mix of writing related and general life goals for 2026. I am so excited to get started! Do you have any hopes or dreams for the year ahead? Please feel free to share in the comments!

Happy New Year!!

The End Is Really The Beginning

~ ChanAtkins ~ 2 Comments

Over the weekend my excitement and sense of victory was growing.

I was ever closer to finishing the first draft of one of my current WIP’s, Black Hare Valley. To recap, I had the idea for this book a few years ago. At the time, my son and I were both reading Stephen King’s It and enjoying the new film adaptations of the story. I suddenly had an urge to pay homage to the master of horror by penning a story set in a weird and eerie little town, where unlikely heroes (ie teenagers) are pitted against forces of evil. That was all I had. I wanted to create a town though and came up with the idea of Black Hare Valley. This was because I am rather obsessed with hares. Around this time we had also visited a well known iron age hill fort and after a bit of research on folklore and magic, my ideas started to grow. But what we needed first was a map. So, my son and I rolled out a long piece of paper and together created Black Hare Valley. It was so much fun, and as the town grew, so did my characters and their lives. That was as far as it went at the time. I was busy on other books and my son didn’t want to help write it. I folded up the map and tucked it inside the notebook alongside some ideas, research and character bios.

Around three years later, last February we had a 5 day power cut and a two week internet cut. This made it impossible for me to continue editing my 4-book series ready for release (The Day The Earth Turned) or work on what was my current WIP, the spin-off book from The Boy With The Thorn In The Side; working title At Night We Played In The Road…

With no TV or internet, surrounded by candles and fairylights, I decided to pick up that notebook and unfold that map. I had an idea of how and where to start the story and thought I would just kill some time by writing the first paragraph. The paragraph morphed into a chapter, followed by another, and another, and another. I was then fully immersed and addicted and before I knew it, I had filled a notebook and started another. Since then, I have been scribbling down this story most days. There was a three week break in May where I concentrated on editing priorities and the release of the book I co-wrote with author Sim Sansford, (Hangman’s Revenge.) Also, I was abit stuck.

I had reached a point where I seemed to be heading towards some sort of climax but at the same time, I wasn’t sure what it would be or how it would happen or even what it would mean. This stuck feeling was made worse by the fact I had not yet gone back and read through anything I had written. It’s easier to do this when using Word on the laptop – with a scruffy notebook and illegible handwriting, it’s a bit tricky. So I just kept going, adding notes, extra ideas and so on to the front of the first notebook where my planning and character bios were. One day on a long walk I got the ending in my head and it all made sense. I was nearing the finish line and it felt great!

Knowing how it would end spurred me on and I wrote several chapters last weekend, just trying to get it down. Finally, on Monday night I wrote the last chapter, the last paragraph and the last sentence, followed by those delicious, victorious words; The End.

I felt amazing. It always feels amazing to know you have got there. You didn’t give up. You battled through plot holes and writer’s block of varying degrees, time constraints, lack of energy and all the other books wanting you to work on them! I did it! I was so happy, so excited and I still am.

Now though, the real work begins. For the end is really the beginning. I have a town, some characters, (all of whom need fleshing out, particularly with work on their families and back stories) I have a plot I really need to check through, ideas I need to embellish, scenes I need to add and a whole lot more. In short, the second draft will feel like the real story is being written. What I have here in these five scruffy notebooks, written in my horrific handwriting, covered in question marks and lines and arrows and bubbles of thoughts, is a skeleton waiting to be fleshed out. Waiting to come fully alive. I have the bones of a story, the beginnings of characters, and the idea of a world.

The second draft is my favourite because you find out what you have done. At this point, I am excited and in awe and I feel a bit like someone else wrote it! Was that really me, filling notebook after notebook, at night, in the car, while cooking dinner, by candlelight? Yes, it was me, but I feel like the real me is the one who has to now pick this thing apart and make it shine, make it work. The real work starts now. Well, not immediately now because I am going to give myself a break from it to let it breathe, and so that I can pay the same level of crazed addicted energy to my other WIP.

The first draft is a slog; a hesitant crawl to the finish line plagued by self-doubt and blocks of all sorts. It’s a battle, no doubt. The second draft is seeped in victory but its where things start getting technical. I am really, really looking forward to it. I know there will be countless drafts after the second to really polish it up, respond to beta reader feedback, edit, revise, edit, proofread and so on. But the second draft is all mine. It’s me and this book alone in a room and I cannot wait to get started!