MANUSCRIPT AWAY

And what I did on my day off.

At 5.31pm yesterday I sent Audible the first draft of Sleeper Agent 2. For a bridging book it came out remarkably fast and easy at the end. Origin stories are great fun but they can lead to the dreaded Difficult Second Novel trap.

Not so this time. I think I know why it went so smoothly. I had a Julia Duffy/Dan Black moment about half way through. Unplanned, and massively counter to what I actually did have planned, but I decided to roll with it.

As soon as I let that happen, I jumped from grinding out 1500 words a day to torching 4000-5000. I’m weeks behind updating my Patreon with chapters because all I wanted to do every day was get back to writing more of this storyline.

That’s pleasing, after 30-plus novels. I don’t have that feeling very often these days.

To celebrate I started a new workout program (I know, forgive me), and cooked up a big fat chicken-n-cheese omelette for breakfast. Then I sort of meandered through the rest of the morning. I’m still meandering now.

Tomorrow I’ll sit down and start plotting out WW 3.2, and maybe give Random House a tickle about my edits for the next Cruel Stars book.