Invasion

Book Four Updates

owenbaillie Invasion, Updates

I’m happy to report the first draft of book four is done and heading into rewrites. I estimate it will be published early-mid April. I know I’m a shocker for missing my deadlines, but this time I’m on track and have been more focused than ever.

The book has a heap of new characters and a totally new location. It goes back to the beginning (before we pick up the characters in book 1) and explains a little of how things broke down. In fact, the tentative title is BREAKDOWN.

The idea of a new book might make some people happy, but book four doesn’t involve characters from books one to three.

Ouch.

I did post a warning about this in the afterword of book two, and it has always been my plan to converge two groups of characters for the final three books (seven-nine).

However, books four to six are integral to the final three books. I hope the idea of not reading about your favourites from books one to three does not put you off book four. Trust me, there the characters are different and engaging. All the characters have a place in the future of this world that you will enjoy as much as the old ones. Those that survive, anyway.

Here’s my problem…

Due to deadlines, I left book three (Escape) on a massive cliffhanger (bad me). I regret not concluding this and have received a lot of e-mails and quite a few reviews basically telling me in a nice way that such a conclusion was not very nice.

So now, the question is:

Do I finish the cliffhanger for book three and add it to the existing version, then notify all those who have purchased it to download the updated version for free? Amazon has a system that allows an author to do this. Anyone who has purchased it would then just get the same book with the last chapter added.

Or do I leave the cliffhanger to be concluded in book seven?

I really had not planned on taking so long to get book four done, but life got in the way (and a little story called Murder Inc.). Originally, I was going to add book three’s conclusion to the start of book four, but I feel I need to keep them separate.

Book seven would still be another twelve months away. Perhaps people have forgotten the end of book three now and it no longer matters.

I’m looking forward to hearing what readers think so hit me back with your thoughts and thanks for staying interested…

 

 

Escape, Invasion of the Dead, Book 3, is Here!

owenbaillie Invasion, writing

I’ll be honest, it got to the third week of October and I considered my chances of publishing this book before Christmas pretty slim. I hadn’t looked at the story for more than three weeks and it seemed my mojo had taken Christmas holidays early. Often, the only way to get out of this is to just sit down and write, which is exactly what I did.

And it worked. I slowly gathered momentum and worked out where the story was going and what the characters were doing.

When I picked it up again, the first draft was about 66,000 words, or 2/3 of the final count. I had most scenes, but they lacked detail and purpose. Characters had gone missing. The pace was jerky, and it didn’t feel anywhere near close to finished. There were some moments early on where I wondered how I would ever be able to turn it into a coherent story. It’s pretty daunting at that point, wondering whether you have the skill or the perseverance to make it all happen.

This is how I write. I bash out a first draft like its a 500 piece puzzle missing 300 of the pieces. I end up doing four or five edits of every story, adding, cutting, polishing, until I’m so sick of reading it that I don’t think I can add any more. Each read through and edit gets a little better.

I got there in the end and felt pretty good about not letting the people down who I’d told I would publish before Christmas. It’s not perfect, and I know when I look back at it in a couple of months there will be glaring holes, but for now, it’s the best I can do.