Stuart Bone's Blog - Posts Tagged "reading"
I'm Back
I took a break from Goodreads a while ago. I thought deleting my account would mean everything was removed bar my books. I was wrong. All my old blog posts remained, plus quotes, and answers to questions. But now I've retrieved my account and I spent last Friday afternoon going through all my old blog posts and, as a writer, I amended, edited and deleted.
I was surprised to see that I had messages on some posts. I don't ever remember receiving an email from Goodreads telling me someone had posted a message otherwise I would have replied. I didn't even know people read them! Anyway, apologies if you did leave a message and were miffed I didn't respond. Hopefully after five or six years that anger has abated. From now on I'll check each time I log on.
It was interesting reading through my old posts and remembering things I'd done, whether that was related to my novels or marketing or trying new things. I hadn't realised how much I moved between books and genres after my first two humorous novels were published. Back in 2018 I started writing a comedy crime novel that was never published. Guess what...yes, I'm back rewriting that again. At the time I couldn't marry the right levels of humour and crime together. Since then I wrote two psychological mystery novels. The first (REFLECTIONS) had a rewrite a year after publication. The second (THICKER THAN WATER) was based on my first attempt at a novel back in 2003.
Rewriting something that is seemingly finished is an incredibly hard thing to do, I've found, but it does have its rewards as well.
REFLECTIONS was sitting a little too much between mystery and literary fiction. I chose to make it more of a psychological mystery and came up with a number of new ideas; too many ideas. In the end I realised there wasn't much wrong with the original and I mainly just adjusted the tone, but the new ideas left me with a potential follow on to the story.
THICKER THAN WATER is a story about two siblings meeting in their forties/fifties, neither knowing the other existed. Together they look to the past to see why the elder was given up. I first had the idea for this story over twenty years ago. While that book was never published the draft was proof that I was capable of writing a full length novel. Looking for an idea for my second psychological mystery, and with the popularity of the TV series, LONG LOST FAMILY, and the rise in family tree websites, it seemed a good idea to resurrect this story and adapt it. DNA research has come such a long way since my first draft back in 2003. I was eager to use that in this story...until it made it too easy for the siblings to meet and I had to come up with an idea of how that couldn't be used. There was a lot of research involved in this book.
Now I've returned to comedy and have resurrected CRIME & NOURISHMENT that I left as a 100k word draft that just wasn't funny enough.
It's difficult deciding how much of an original manuscript to keep and then trying to fit that in with new ideas. While some characters remain, others disappear. The setting gets moved and then moved back again. For this book, in the end, I had to concentrate on the comedy first while writing a new draft. Once that was done I could then go back to the crime side, rewriting a lot of the investigation while keeping the comedic tone in place. It's taken a very long time, and a lot of drafts, to get things right, which is partly why I haven't published a book since 2023. The other reason is family issues and having taken on more of a carer role. But the book is now nearing completion and I'm pleased I did return to it. I'd like to have it ready for publication in March but January is already fast disappearing so I'm not committing to a date yet.
While a bad day writing is still better than a good day working back in investment banking, I'm really happy that I have no more old manuscripts lying around, calling out to be reworked. From now on it's just new ideas ready to be adapted into a new novel.
2026 marks thirteen years since I gave up my previous career to write full time. It will also mark ten years since my first two novels were published (DRIVEN TO DISTRACTION in April, NOTHING VENTURED in November). It's hard to believe. So much has happened in those years both professionally and personally. Some experiences were challenging, others great, and I've learned something from each of them.
Even though it's been ten years of being a published author, I still feel like it's just the start for me. Once novel number six is published it's onto the next one, with another three developed ideas to work on after that, bringing my tally to ten. I really do feel like I'm back.
I was surprised to see that I had messages on some posts. I don't ever remember receiving an email from Goodreads telling me someone had posted a message otherwise I would have replied. I didn't even know people read them! Anyway, apologies if you did leave a message and were miffed I didn't respond. Hopefully after five or six years that anger has abated. From now on I'll check each time I log on.
It was interesting reading through my old posts and remembering things I'd done, whether that was related to my novels or marketing or trying new things. I hadn't realised how much I moved between books and genres after my first two humorous novels were published. Back in 2018 I started writing a comedy crime novel that was never published. Guess what...yes, I'm back rewriting that again. At the time I couldn't marry the right levels of humour and crime together. Since then I wrote two psychological mystery novels. The first (REFLECTIONS) had a rewrite a year after publication. The second (THICKER THAN WATER) was based on my first attempt at a novel back in 2003.
Rewriting something that is seemingly finished is an incredibly hard thing to do, I've found, but it does have its rewards as well.
REFLECTIONS was sitting a little too much between mystery and literary fiction. I chose to make it more of a psychological mystery and came up with a number of new ideas; too many ideas. In the end I realised there wasn't much wrong with the original and I mainly just adjusted the tone, but the new ideas left me with a potential follow on to the story.
THICKER THAN WATER is a story about two siblings meeting in their forties/fifties, neither knowing the other existed. Together they look to the past to see why the elder was given up. I first had the idea for this story over twenty years ago. While that book was never published the draft was proof that I was capable of writing a full length novel. Looking for an idea for my second psychological mystery, and with the popularity of the TV series, LONG LOST FAMILY, and the rise in family tree websites, it seemed a good idea to resurrect this story and adapt it. DNA research has come such a long way since my first draft back in 2003. I was eager to use that in this story...until it made it too easy for the siblings to meet and I had to come up with an idea of how that couldn't be used. There was a lot of research involved in this book.
Now I've returned to comedy and have resurrected CRIME & NOURISHMENT that I left as a 100k word draft that just wasn't funny enough.
It's difficult deciding how much of an original manuscript to keep and then trying to fit that in with new ideas. While some characters remain, others disappear. The setting gets moved and then moved back again. For this book, in the end, I had to concentrate on the comedy first while writing a new draft. Once that was done I could then go back to the crime side, rewriting a lot of the investigation while keeping the comedic tone in place. It's taken a very long time, and a lot of drafts, to get things right, which is partly why I haven't published a book since 2023. The other reason is family issues and having taken on more of a carer role. But the book is now nearing completion and I'm pleased I did return to it. I'd like to have it ready for publication in March but January is already fast disappearing so I'm not committing to a date yet.
While a bad day writing is still better than a good day working back in investment banking, I'm really happy that I have no more old manuscripts lying around, calling out to be reworked. From now on it's just new ideas ready to be adapted into a new novel.
2026 marks thirteen years since I gave up my previous career to write full time. It will also mark ten years since my first two novels were published (DRIVEN TO DISTRACTION in April, NOTHING VENTURED in November). It's hard to believe. So much has happened in those years both professionally and personally. Some experiences were challenging, others great, and I've learned something from each of them.
Even though it's been ten years of being a published author, I still feel like it's just the start for me. Once novel number six is published it's onto the next one, with another three developed ideas to work on after that, bringing my tally to ten. I really do feel like I'm back.
