Welcome to Hidden Things

Welcome to The Invisible City, citizen.

It's official: Book One of the four books I have planned to form the core of the Hidden Universe series, is in production. The project started on 1 April, a fools journey I know, but who but fools dare to try in the face of today's publishing industry.

As if that was not enough, I've decided to make thing more interesting: I'm outlining the entire book, from start to finish, in just 10 weeks. My goal is to produce around 5 chapters a week with a final count of about 50, resulting in a book of 480-600 untold pages, give or take a bit more or a bit less.

After that, I'll package it up with my already written cover letter and off it will go to the list of agents that I'm trying to seduce with the smell of its freshly inked pages. I'll spend more time editing and rewriting than all the time spent writing it to begin with.  And that's just a start, it seems.

I think it can be done, and more importantly, be done well. If nothing else, it will be exciting to see how things develop working to such a tight schedule.

I am now part way through chapter 5, with 97 pages under my belt. I've spent some time as well choosing my epigraph, plotting out the major events of book one, creating most of my major (and a few minor) characters, locations, world building, races, magic, technology and figuring out the various threads from other existing works that I want very much to weave into my own special creation.

The book holds quite a very few classic fantasy tropes, but I'd like to think it is a recipe leavened by liberal amounts of the weird, wonderful, strange, and down-right noir-ish, and that I've done them better than most.

Well, that's it for now. Keep your eye on this space for regular updates, though most of my limited time as a full time carer for two under fives has got to go into stealing those scant few hours each day to actually do the writing bit which I'll admit, is hard graff if you can get it.

I'm now on Twitter as well all the time, so some of my updates will likely find their way there as well.

I hope you enjoy the ride odyssey, and as they say, buy the book.

Best wishes,

E.