Book #2 In Production!

It's Christmas Eve! Last week has been busy in the run-up to Christmas. I finished work until January, planned a staff quiz night, and now I'm back at my parents' for the Christmas holidays! You can bet I'm lounging around in jogging bottoms, watching Christmas films, and arguing. It's so funny how quickly you regress back after a day of being back at your parents'!

I thought I'd take the time away from work to start my second book - a follow-up from Til Death Do Us Part. This book is called Ashes to Ashes and will follow on straight from where the first book left off (no spoilers yet!). It's set to be dark, twisty, and so much fun!

Ashes to Ashes:

The idea for my second book came to me as I was writing my first. I fell in love with the characters in Til Death Do Us Part and Justin's story, and I kept thinking as I was writing it: what would Justin go on to do next? And quite quickly, a plan took shape in my mind. Locations were finalised, details to expand on locked in, and plot twists hatched.

I really love the idea of setting each book around a big life event: a wedding, a funeral, possibly winning the lottery (who knows). Ashes to Ashes initially started with that idea. The early conceptions included: a murder at a funeral, or the body in the casket not actually being dead, but I moved away from that as the twists and characters came together. And who knows, at the end of this book, it could be completely different!

Lessons I've Learned

I am tackling this book way differently from how I approached Til Death Do Us Part.

• Using Reedsy: Before, I wrote everything in Google Docs, and whilst it's great for writing, I find Reedsy much easier to use. In Reedsy, you can plan everything out in one document, it automatically formats what you've written into a print-ready document (including copyright page, dedications, etc), and you don't have to worry about lettrine (when the first letter of each chapter is big) or including the indents - Reedsy does it all for you. And it's totally free!

• Planning BETTER: When I wrote my first book, I knew what the big plot twists were, but there were lots of details that I didn't plan out properly (when the flashbacks all took place, how the flashback timelines affect the current day, some minor details, etc). This led to plot holes and timelines not adding up, meaning I had to keep going back in each edit to ensure the flashbacks made sense. It sounds really obvious typing that out now, but I didn't plan it in the level of detail I'm doing this time.

• Plotting Out Chapters: This time round, I have created a board with my overall plot, all my characters, and the outlines of chapters. I'm not planning every single thing that happens in each chapter, but I'm outlining what the theme is, what we discover, and how it ends. Hopefully, this will make every chapter a bit more purposeful and will link back to the end goal.

  
  

  I'm not restricting this too much; the bit I love about writing is the spontaneity. It's so exciting when you think I could write absolutely anything! I'm not restricted by a budget or having to pull anything off in real life. Car crash? You got it! Three houses explode! Add it in! Main character murdered mid-way through? Great for surprises! Plane crash that kills four main characters? If it suits the story, go for it.

  
  

How It's Going

This bit is the exciting part! My last week has been spent listening to music in the evening and imagining the chapters unfolding. I find myself just about to fall asleep when a bit of dialogue pops into my mind. Fear of forgetting it the next day leads me to grab my phone and add it to my notes. Then as soon as I'm dropping off, another line pops into my head!

Writing the second book is strange. I'm still working on setting up the first book, things like creating a website, a social media profile, and adding minor tweaks to the manuscript. When I wrote the first book, I just wrote and wrote and wrote until it was finished, whereas with this book, I'm taking things much slower. I think a part of me is thinking, can I do it again? Maybe it was just the one idea I had. I'm conscious not to reuse the same phrases or adjectives so it feels slightly different. But we'll see!