Hello, friend!

A very warm welcome to the inaugural (and slightly redesigned) newsletter of 2024! I hope you had a relaxing time over the festive period, and that Santa brought you everything you were hoping for (if Christmas is your thing). I mostly spent the holidays with my family, watching movies and eating far too much fudge. (It’s a weakness.) It rained in Glasgow pretty much all throughout the last fortnight, but the weather turned in the last couple of days, and this morning I woke up to this bright and frosty view:

One of the reasons why I was able to down tools for such an extended period is that I managed to complete Draft 1 of Anna Scavolini Book 5 on Christmas Eve, more than a month ahead of schedule. (I’d pencilled in January 2024 as my unofficial deadline.)

When we last spoke, I had just over 35,000 words in the bag, but once I hit the midway point, I started to fairly zip along and ended up getting through the remainder in record quick time.

And, for once, my initial estimate of a 120,000-word draft proved to be bang on. The final tally is 120,112 words – and, while I’m sure I could have satisfied my OCD by going back through the manuscript to find 112 words to cut, at the time, I was just happy to have reached the finish line and be in a position to put it in a drawer and forget about it until the new year.

That said, while I took the opportunity to indulge in plenty of R&R over the break, I haven’t been completely resting on my laurels. While the dust was settling on Anna 5, I took some time to look ahead to the future and work out a rough plan that ended up covering books 6–8. It’s all very vague at present – we’re talking about two or three paragraphs for each book, with an awful lot of notes along the lines of “maybe something involving X or Y” – and I’ve no doubt that things will change considerably between now and whenever I actually put pen to paper. We are, after all, talking about potentially the next three years’ worth of stories. But it’s nice to have a roadmap, however vague, ahead of me. It reassures me that I’m not about to run out of ideas for Anna and company anytime soon!

What, you didn’t think I was actually going to let you read it, did you? ;)

I also re-read and punched up an outline I originally wrote almost exactly a year ago for what, at the time, I thought was going to be my next project – a standalone murder-mystery featuring a protagonist who’s very different from Anna. I ended up putting it to one side to concentrate on Anna 5, but it’s a project I fully intend to tackle sooner rather than later. In fact, it’ll probably be the next thing I write, once Anna 5 is out of the door. (I know, I said that when I was working on Anna 4 as well, but this time I mean it, dammit!)

For now, though, it’s full steam ahead with Anna 5. Over the weekend, I cracked open the manuscript for Draft 1 and started to re-read it. And, while the aim is to approach it with fresh eyes, I’m not going in completely unprepared.

Something I find useful to do before I re-read any draft is to write down everything that I anticipate might be a problem. I quite often find that there are niggling issues that my subconscious has picked up on but which I haven’t actively considered until I put pen into paper and formulate a list. Similarly, certain issues will have emerged over the process of actually writing the draft – usually big picture plot problems that require too major a rethink to simply fix on the fly – and I usually note these down as I go so I’ve got a “troubleshooting” list for the next pass.

I’m going into this particular read-through with a relatively short list of issues, and some preliminary ideas as to how I might resolve them. And, of course, the read-through itself will no doubt reveal additional niggles which I hadn’t anticipated. I’ll also be undertaking a line edit as I go, tweaking the prose and finessing the dialogue, while saving the bigger problems for a separate pass.

All told, I’m hoping to have the next draft completed by early February, which will put me well ahead of schedule – and then, finally, I’ll be able to share the title and blurb with you!

It’s all come together incredibly quickly – almost alarmingly quickly, if I’m being honest – and, inevitably, this has given rise to a small but persistent voice at the back of my head, whispering the same question that I suspect all authors have to grapple with:

“But what if it’s sh*t?”

And I suppose it’s always possible. On the other hand, I’ve been around the block enough times now to be reasonably confident that my instincts for what makes a good story aren’t completely non-existent, and that, if I truly had written a stinker, I’d know by now.

But I feel confident about this one – more confident than I’ve felt about any of my previous books at this stage in their development – and I’m eager to get it into the hands of my editor, my advance team, and then finally the wider public.

So enough yakking from me, and back to the grinstone! Until next time, happy reading!

Best wishes,
Michael

Missed an issue of the newsletter? Find it in the archive.

Have you read all my books?

Anna Scavolini mysteries
In the Silence
Cruel Summer
The Shadow Men
Women Who Kill

Other novels
The Library Murders
Bury Your Secrets

Box sets
The Anna Scavolini Mysteries - Volume One