… and I’ve finished the first draft of my latest novel. Yes, I celebrated. I splashed out on a packet of posh crisps and a nice roll for my lunch. Never let it be said I don’t know how to live it up.
So far, the new one stands at just over 125,000 words. That will certainly come down once I start editing. It’s the fourth of my Porfiry Petrovich novels. It’s a great feeling to reach this stage, though I was very emotional writing the ending this morning. There’s always a feeling of loss when you get to the end of a novel, but in this case it was magnified because I’ve reached the end of the original quartet of books I planned to write. When my agent approach Faber and Faber back in 2006, I had one complete manuscript (A GENTLE AXE) and three outlines. All of those outlines have now been turned into full length novels (give or take a ton of intensive editing on the new one). The second book in my series, A VENGEFUL LONGING, was published in 2008, the third, A RAZOR WRAPPED IN SILK, comes out on the first of April this year. A month away. The fourth will be published in 2011.
What happens next, I’m just not sure. Or at least not as far as my writing is concerned. But the sun is shining. Right now, I’m just going to enjoy that while it lasts!
Huge congrats, Rog. Very much looking forward to hearing what you decide to do next…!
Well done Roger.
And it will be very interesting to see what you do write next!