Okay! It’s me! Going to try this again...

Music

This is from Johnny Cash's last few recordings, some amazing albums he recorded in Rick Rubin's garage(!). It's a cover of a Will Oldham song, in his Bonnie "Prince" Billy guise, which I prefer:

(There are other BPB versions which ... I don't...)

(And I’ve probably shared that before…)

Last (few) weeks

It’s somehow February when it still feels like the week between Xmas and New Year. So, what have I been up to?

Well, this is a year where I'm tackling TWELVE projects across the year. The size of them will vary, naturally, so it's all attainable.

Project 1: FEAR OF ANY KIND (Marshall 7) 

This was written in a fugue state in the first fortnight of the year. Admittedly, I'd written it as a screenplay based on an outline first, so it wasn't too much work. A week to convert the screenplay into a novel, then a week to tighten and tidy. But I wasn't feeling very well by the time I finished it...

While it's largely set in Hawick, I did a bit of a research trip with Mark Edwards to a wee village in the western Highlands called Applecross (in reality, it's a few villages) to cover a chunk of this book and the backstory. Despite driving through that mad storm, it was less eventful than our last research trip (no truckers tried to kill us this time) and hopefully the books will be more successful this time...

That’s Skye and Raasay in the distance.

This beach is called Sand. Honest! There’s Big Sand further north.

Bodies here?

Anyway, it's being proofed just now and then it'll go to Angus King for his narration. It's on preorder now, due out 31st May!

LINK

Project 2: GHOST IN THE MACHINE (Police Scotland 2) 

Wait, what? This came out in April 2012. Ah, but I'm editing it again. Why? I haven't touched it since 2014 and boy did it need it. Angus tried recording the audio and it was taking forever because it's very clunky and rough as a badger's bum. I've edited a lot of other stuff from that era, namely PS06 (formerly Cullen 5), Fenchurch 1, Fenchurch 2, Dodds 2 (formerly Dodds 1), so I decided I needed to redo the first four books I published. That'll mean PS07 LIARS AND THIEVES is the oldest book unedited and it's FINE – Angus has recorded it so I can't touch it now.

Anyway, I've finished the first pass of GHOST, cutting it from 83k down to 64k, which I expect will rise up to roughly 70k. But it's a much, much better book now. More streamlined and everything sings that didn't sing before. All the bad stuff isn't in there anymore but all the good stuff is betterer. And there's a bit of new stuff including a pretty big change, but you'll find out later...

As part of it, there was a murder victim who always bugged me as she wasn't central to the story, so I've cut her. And you know what? That section is good stuff, but could be used in a better context. So what I'm doing is:

Project 8: THE LOST (Police Scotland 10) 

A new Police Scotland book, THE LOST, which will be revised old stuff. A new number 10 and it'll star Craig Hunter (and will probably feature Cullen). It's going to be the old stuff cut from GHOST, but tidied up and greatly expanded with new motivations and characters, but it'll be paired up with CUDDLY TOY, a novella I gave away to my mailing list but which could do with a bit more focus and attention. And print readers haven't been able to get it.

So. That's another project to add to the list, but it'll be a good one.

Next week

Next week, I'll be reading and editing GHOST, then sending it off to John for copy editing. It'll be a bloody relief!

But then I'll be moving on to:

Project 3: DEVIL IN THE DETAIL (Police Scotland 3) 

Yes. I'm doing the first four books (well, 2-5) in new editions for the audiobook stuff. This one won't be as brutal as GHOST, but it could still be a bit tasty. I've looked at FIRE and STAB and they seem okay, but I'm expecting to grind my teeth down to stumps while going through this one. And making yet more changes, no doubt, just to make the series seem all consistent and that.

I think after that I will move on to:

Project 4: REDACTED (REDACTED) 

Which will just be a week or so of editing. And an announcement will come soon.

And after that, it'll be:

Project 5: OUR DEBTS TO THE PAST (Marshall 8) 

I'll do the screenplay draft of this, to get it all nailed down first. Tentative release is 30th September but I might bring it forward...

Then 6 & 7 will be FIRE and STAB. Then back to 5 to do the novel stuff, and then I'll do 8, which is THE LOST. Then I'll have a nice little break for a bit, then I've got projects 9 to 12, one of which is:

Project 9: UNTITLED (Marshall 9)

Marshall 9! Yes! So, in amongst all that stuff, there's going to be some more of him. And it'll be a springboard for some new novels set in Edinburgh (projects 10-12) which are based on some old material but which will be vastly different.

Anyway, that's a lot!

Hope all's well. Bye!

Cheers,
Ed

What do you mean, who are you?

I’m me! Yes, I’ve been crap with updating this and sending it out over the last few months but I’ve been pretty busy.

#Music

This week’s tune is Holy Holy by Geordie Greep.

(I thought they were a band called Geordie Creep, which would be a very different thing. That’s his name.)

It’s absolutely insane, like a cross between Steely Dan and, God knows, The Fall? I can’t access it and it keeps dragging me back in.

#Last Week

Okay, so the last few weeks...

I can’t remember the last time I wrote to you, but I’ve just LAST NIGHT finished the first draft of Marshall 7, FEAR OF ANY KIND. It’s written as a screenplay, but it comes to 360 pages now. That’s a six hour film. Or 6x60 minute episodes. But I’m really, really happy with how it’s come out. And in perfect time to shut off for Xmas before my brain goes.

You’ll have to wait for a bit for it to come out -- we’re gunning for the 31st March. I’ve got book 8 sculpted out, so that’ll be off the rank a few months after that. Maybe six months.

#This Week I’ll be sitting on my bum and watching stuff or playing games this week. But I thought I’d go through some other stuff that’s ongoing.

Angus King has been working his way through the Vicky Dodds books for audio. The first two are out now, but it’s a mere nine days until book 3. Then the next two drop a month apart.

After I reworked Dead in the Water (now over 60k! And it makes sense!), he’s started narrating the Police Scotland books but we ran into a bit of an issue where it was taking a lot longer to narrate the second book than it would, say, a Marshall. Like four times as long. And so I’ve decided to edit the second, third, fourth and fifth books, which haven’t been touched since 2014 and my style has developed a lot since then. So, as well as finishing Marshall 7, I’ll be reworking those books. It’ll be interesting to see how much survives as I suspect they’re pretty rough and basic, without the descriptive stuff I do nowadays, etc. But it’ll be good to get Mr Cullen in the best shape he can be. And maybe put in some cheeky additional stuff, e.g. an appearance or two by Craig Hunter. This happened back in 2024, so it’s all just a case of history repeating.

I reworked a quarter of something else, which took away a week or so of work, but it’s in a much better place. Hopefully there’ll be some news on that score.

Anyway, that’s quite enough from me -- have a great New Year. There’ll be a Christmas Eve blast to the full mailing list, so keep your peepers peeled for that.

Cheers,
Ed

Sorry, I know it’s been a while, just been really busy and never found the time to do this.

#Music

Here’s some music, which is currently playing. Not new but not old.

Awake by Tycho, from the album of the same name. I think their first two records are amazing, blending electronic music with live instruments with a real snazzy poppy feel to it. They started adding vocals and became a bit blander later, sadly. Anyway, hope you enjoy!

#Last Few Weeks

It’s been head down with FALSE DAWN, the second Shunty story. It’s currently sitting at 50,286 words, which is roughly half a Marshall, so it’ll be half the price. There are spoilers below, so be warned - I’ve tagged them.

This book was done as an experiment to improve my writing method. I previously would sketch out a detailed outline, on cards (or the electronic equivalent), which could sometimes run to 22,000 words (the first Marshall book) or 35,000 (a secret book I haven’t announced). And I’d still get into problems with them, usually around the end of the book, as I was spending too much time in the wood and didn’t notice all the trees. Or too much time in the trees and didn’t notice I was in a wood. Not sure which. Anyway, I’d massage early chapters and sometimes the flow at the end was rubbish, so I’d have to stop and think it though. And then when I was writing and editing, so much of my focus would be on the story stuff that the line-level writing would need another pass or two.

So, I’d heard from another writer who writes his books as a screenplay first and thought I’d try that on something easily contained to see how it would work for a full-length Marshall book. And that’s this. Screenwriting is something I’ve wanted to write and my style has been consciously in that vein – you could take any of, say, the Marshall books and easily convert that to a shootable screenplay. Whether anyone would is another matter!

Partly. Because I’ve written rather a lot of books in the mystery genre of police procedurals and wanted to do something a wee bit different, hence

(SPOILERS)

putting Shunty in uniform, something he’s never been. It was supposed to be his first day, but I did that with FALSE START, so it evolved. And hopefully he has too. He’s not the same green-around-the-gills loveable numpty as in that; his brief stint has let him develop. And writing a story where the bit prologue bit happens near the middle was something that interested me too – how to make the first chunk interesting. And hopefully I’ve captured the chaos of a uniform backshift. And writing about Edinburgh again... Man, I’ve missed it...

(SPOILERS OVER)

The editing process was a lot easier as it happened on a 22,000 word screenplay, which is a linear story that’s easy to parse and process, but significantly easy to change without rich descriptions ballsing everything up! The editing of the novel would’ve been even easier had either I read an edit note more clearly or my editor expressed it more clearly. I still think I’m right, but I think where we got to with it makes the story much stronger.

So, that’s FALSE DAWN and hopefully you’ll enjoy it when it comes out. It was really fun to write and it’s given me a new level of enthusiasm for future books. And I really love the characters here. Maybe some will come back in future.

#This Week

This week is a case of head down with a final read edit of FALSE DAWN before it goes off for a copy edit. As I said above, the dev editing process has been largely trivial (a day’s work rather than five) because editing the screenplay was so much more efficient.

Oh, and FALSE DAWN is on preorder – no description because SPOILERS:

False Dawn - Kindle edition by James, Ed. Literature & Fiction Kindle eBooks @ Amazon.com.

False Dawn - Kindle edition by James, Ed. Download it once and read it on your Kindle device, PC, phones or tablets. Use features like bookmarks, note taking and highlighting while reading False Dawn.

geni.us/EJfalsedawn

#Questions

I got a question last time around from a reader:

“Thanks for the update but I do have one question - why didn’t you enjoy writing the 6th Marshall book? Is it just you or do some authors actually not like writing some of their books. That fact never occurred to me.”

The main factor was the hay fever medication I was on at the time, which made me feel a bit zombie-like. The alternative was bleeding out of my nose constantly! And it was quite stop start, as I was busy with a fair amount of travel at the time, so once I'd settle into a groove it was soon disrupted again. There were some things about the book I found tricky to get right, which made me worry it was rubbish, but to be honest when I got edits and read it back, it was fine.

I think there's a thing with us authors where the circumstances surrounding writing a book can influence how you feel about it, certainly negatively, which makes you think it's a bad book. A lot of people I know talk about what they think as their worst book as the one that actually sells the most or wins a prize (or is shortlisted) etc. And the converse can be true too, where what you think is the best isn't the most successful...

We're capricious beasts! It's why we have editors!

But that painful process is what motivated me to do the screenplay version – the proof will be in THIS WORLD OF SORROW, the seventh Marshall which I’ll be starting in a couple of weeks, and sod it, I am definitely going to do the eighth straight away. Maybe even the ninth. Just need titles for them because I have got stories for both of them! And the story for the seventh has changed to something else and will be set in Hawick – so if you’re from there or live there, I’ll be looking for stories...

Anyone else got a question? I’ll happily answer most of them!

#Stuff

Been watching a few films recently. Mostly in the Alien “franchise”. I have a theory that only the first two in what is termed a franchise are any good (I’d exclude Bond, MCU and Star Wars as they were always intended as big things). The Predator franchise had two great films at the start, then some absolute muck including the two crossovers with Aliens, but Prey from a couple of years ago was fantastic and a return to the roots. With Aliens, the recent Alien: Romulus was its Prey, returning to the roots of the first two great films (Aliens is one of the best films ever IMHO) and ignoring a lot of the stupid bilge since (though I quite like Promotheus, but Ridley Scott seems to have confused Alien and Blade Runner in its sequel). Highly recommend it!

And I started playing Astro Bot on the PS5, which is going to be one of my favourite games ever. It’s got all the joy of a Nintendo Mario game without the frustrations.

Anyway, I’ll try and do this more regularly again, sorry!

Cheers,
Ed

Hey, it's been a while.

#Music

Turn My Way by New Order

Managed to snare the album this is from on vinyl for both much in the Fopp sale last week. It's a comeback for a band who everyone thought were gone, but here they are. This is one of the highlights, featuring backing vocals and guitar from Billy Corgan of Smashing Pumpkins fame (not really a fan, but they've got 2 or 3 absolute bangers). Anyway, hope you enjoy it!

(Yes, I'm one of those twats who has got back into buying vinyl. But I do listen to it all day. He says, sitting in his kitchen listening to Suede on his Sonos speakers...)

#Last Week

Well, Marshall 6 is done and out to proof readers and to Mr A. King who will be doing his usual narrating. Huge thanks to John and Julia for copy editing and proofing. I didn't enjoy writing that book but it's all done.

Oh, and if you're a print fan, you can preorder His Path of Darkness from my site, Grey Dog Books:

https://greydogbooks.co.uk/products/his-path-of-darkness 

Remember - that's a preorder! The book will be with you around the 30th of September. And if you haven’t, it’s cheaper than on Amazon, especially if you buy more than one. It’ll be exclusive in the UK to GDB for a month or so, but overseas Amazonistas will get it there.

Bit of an experiment, this, but it’s working pretty well for me.

Some news – I've finished the screenplay draft of FALSE DAWN, Shunty's second book (or maybe the start of something new...) following on from the end of M06 (note the use of a zero there). I don't want to spoil you on it, so I won't tell you the setup, but it's different to anything I've written in years, probably closest to the first Hunter book, THE MISSING, in tone and setting. It took two days to outline, two to edit the outline, then four to write it as a screenplay, which has now been edited by James (hey, all my editors are Js – as am I technically), though I haven't had the heart to look at it. Once I've edited that document, I'll expand it into a novel.

I've banged on about how this is a process I am adopting now, but it's a much tighter and coherent document than the lengthy outlines I've prepared in the past. I've written the book once now, really, just need to flesh things out and add the bits a screenplay doesn't have – internal sensations like emotion, sights, sounds, smells, etc. I think the ending is nailed down now, which isn't usually the case with an outline, as I get itching to start and have a point of frustrated head scratching late on as I try to fuse two ideas together. It'll be interesting to see how easy the conversion is. I'll be going from something like:

INT. KITCHEN - DAY

Ed is sitting at his table, typing on his iPad. We hear Suede playing Sleeping Pills in the background.

The phone rings.

ED
Bloody hell.

Into:

Ed sat at his kitchen table, tapping away at his iPad. The wispy sounds of Suede drifted in, but he couldn't remember the name of the song. It stopped him typing. He picked up his phone and checked in the Sonos app.
Sleeping Pills.
Huh, he'd thought it was Pantomime Horse.
He started typing again.
His phone rang with the theme from Successtion.
Bloody hell...

You get the drift. The way I write is designed to be entirely visual (and sensual – not in that way, you pervert – so it covers all the senses), with no authorial intrusions or dumps of information. It’s all in the moment. So this is the natural extension of that – write a skellington and then put flesh on it. I suspect it'll be a quick write, but we shall see – I'll start tomorrow, as I had a ton of admin to do today. But it’s mostly done!

#This Week

I'll be doing that expansion job. Hopefully for a week or maybe a wee bit longer. Then I’ll be onto the secret project…

Anyway, that's me. Have a good one!

Cheers,
Ed

Hey,

Where have I been hiding, amiright?

#Music

Have a sneak feeling I’ve done this song before, but it stands up to many, may repeated listens. A power duo of bass/vox and drums, but such a colossal sounds created by splitting the bass signal and passing it through both a bass amp and a guitar amp, an octave up, with lots of mutes and guitar pedals to create that huge sound. Very surprised nobody else has recreated that sound.

#Last Wee While

It’s been a case of head down and getting on with Marshall 6. It’s now done and off to the copy editor for the penultimate pass of the text. My annual trip to Harrogate for Theakston’s Crime Festival split the work in half, whereas usually I’d like to finish a project going into it. Anyway, it’s managed to squeak to about 103k, which is a lot longer than I expected and in the ballpark of the other Marshall books.

Phew.

I was feeling a bit of pressure with that – it’s the third book I’ve written this year, after Marshall 5 and OPERATION HIGH CONCEPT. And I’ve squeezed it in just in time for the editing to happen before Angus King’s narration, with a release on 30th September 2024.

#This Next Few Weeks

As well as taking a lot of time to do nothing, or just garden landscaping work, I’ve got a few projects I’m tackling at a lower speed.

OPERATION MOONSHOT is a screenplay I’ve done about 30pp of 120pp, which I plan to do more work on when my head’s a bit clearer.

I’m going to sort out the synopsis for Marshall 7, with a tentative release date of 31-Jan-25 or 28-Feb-25 – striking while the iron is hot is a good way to sort out issues and refine what I’ve done for it so far. There will be a few subplots moving into this book from book 6, so they need to be resolved – I’d intended this series to be low continuity, but that went out of the window pretty bloody quickly!

One thing I’ve been interested in is writing a screenplay. I am, obviously, but I’m finding it a very fluid way to write and low-cost, i.e. the text is a lot less rich than a novel, so it’s easier to create and to edit. I’m thinking it’ll be a good intermediate step between the synopsis for the book and the novel, rather than a detailed outline. I’m a big believer in outlining, but I think maybe I’d say the synopsis and an outline could be the same document, with much less detail going into the outline, then this screenplay would effectively be the first draft of the book, with a chance to flesh everything out but in a more rigorous way than my outlines have been. Some of my outlines have been 25-35k long, which is insane. A screenplay would be more effective for the same thing.

Anyway, that’s a lot of rambling – I need to test this process out. Rather than get into a bugger’s muddle with Marshall 7, I’ve thought of something else to work on instead. A few years ago, I had an idea about a cop who sees the ghost of a murder victim. I’m not using that ghost stuff, but will be using the characters and setup to provide the basis for a second Shunty novel! Not really got a title for is (well, STOP START) but I’ve got a solid idea or seven about it. So that’ll be another bit of focus – getting a synopsis for that nailed down, then writing the screenplay, then turning the edited screenplay into a novel. And that’ll give me an idea of how the number of screenplay pages converts into one of my novels (in screenwriting, the rule of thumb is a page is a minute on the screen), with something I’d like to do and which will give me a nice bridge between Marshall 6 and 7.

And there’s something else that’s going to take a bit of time to finish but I think will make people grin like absolute fools. I hope!

#Stuff

Nothing much to add – I’ve been so deep into writing and editing that book that I’ve not done much else. FLY ME TO THE MOON (Scarlett Johansen and Channing Tatum) was a charming old-fashioned film with tons and tons of great humour. DEADPOOL & WOLVERINE was very enjoyable, even if the story is complete nonsense – I watched the previous two back to back and think the third is the most enjoyable, but they don’t really stand up to repeated viewings. I watched MEMENTO because I’ve never seen it and it was leaving Netflix – it’s a very ordinary story dressed up with a time trick that I couldn’t care less about. I’m 2/3 through ERIC (Netflix), which I think I’m enjoying – the big blue imaginary monster doesn’t appear anywhere near as much as I feared and it’s got an incredible cast.

Anyway, that’s all from me – I’ll be back in a few weeks once I’m deep into a new project. Or maybe I’ll be back sooner, who knows?

Oh, and the Blood & Guts update is still broken. Harrumph! Amazon are looking into it for me – I might need to do a plan B.

Cheers,
Ed

Yeah, I forgot to do last week’s!

The title I was planning on using was one of my book titles to reflects Scotland’s meek exit from the Euros – I mean, playing as badly as England but without the world-class players to score two fluky goals... There’s always next time, but I’m not sure where a half-decent centre forward is going to come from.

#Music

Not listening to any vocal music just now, so none this week.

Here’s a DJ set from Luke Vibert in his Amen Andrews persona:

https://boilerroom.tv/recording/luke-vibert-aka-amen-andrews

(The name is a pun on TV host Eamonn Andrews and the Amen break, from Amen Brother by the Winstons, used in virtually all jungle/drum&bass tracks)

#Last Week Fortnight

Well, I managed to write and edit 28,000 words, with another 6,300 pencilled in (though most of that chunk was today and is going to need a lot of work to expand when I edit).

A decent but not spectacular amount, especially considering the amount of travel I’ve done and the effect the hay fever has had on me. This last few weeks have been bloody awful when it comes to hay fever. Bloody horrible. Literally – I spent a lot of last weekend with horrible nosebleeds that would start as soon as the previous one stopped. If you don’t suffer, you’re lucky... I’m on new antihistamines, which seem to be doing the business but are knackering in a different way from the others. At some point this month (God, it’s July now!) I’ll be able to stop taking them at all and it’ll all be golden again, but that’s the best part of a fortnight away. Maybe I’m past the worst of it, but never say never.

How’s the book going? It’s okay. It’s not the book I’ve enjoyed writing the most, I’ll say that for it, but it’s definitely the one I’ve enjoyed researching the most. From the stuff with Beltane in Peebles, and the other Common Ridings across the area, to getting lost finding a tunnel in Peebles, to the little jaunt I did down by Hawick and Selkirk yesterday, venturing deep into the Ettrick valley to the titular village and over to not quite find another tunnel, but finding two things that will fit the story perfectly.

A hill and a tree somewhere near Selkirk in the Scottish Borders

#This Week

This week, I really need to finish the bugger for my own sanity. I may take it easy for a few weeks after it as my head is mush just now. Hopefully stopping taking antihistamines will ease that.

I’ve got eight chapters to write, so conceivably that should all be done by Wednesday, if not tomorrow. I’ve got two new chapters to add in and a ton of tweaks and changes to make, but it’s all good. Now I’ve written that all out, I know I’ll get this done this week. Which is a good feeling.

Have a good week – I will be back on Mondaty to let you know how I got on with it.

Cheers,
Ed

Hey!

It’s me! It’s still me! And it’s always me!

#Music

No music this week as I’m still obsessively listening to Autechre and, as much as I love them and their cold electronic sounds, there are no lyrics I can swipe and pretend reflect an aspect of the human condition.

Instead, I’ve used the quote from James Hogg’s The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner which inspired this book what I is working on.

#Last Week

A bit of a short week as I was away for a few days, but great to switch off and do something different for a bit. Had two pretty much perfect days.

Otherwise, it was just a case of working away on this effing book. Over 43k now, which isn’t a whole heap of progress, but still pretty solid actually so I’m trying to take that as a victory. I am closing in the halfway mark, after all – just another eight chapters to go to hit that. Sigh. I’m trying a different approach with this (which I may have alluded to last week), where instead of the tick-tock of day-to-day editing/writing, I’m writing the whole “sequence of scenes” (think of it as being half of one of the four acts in a 3-act structure) (that’s right – there’s the first act, the third act and the second act, which is half the book and which has a midpoint right in the middle of it) before I edit the whole sequence in a batch. That previous approach was slowing me down and made it feel like I’m wading through this book rather than swimming. And I want to optimise for speed and efficiency a bit more just now. And it went pretty well on the “Fun & Games pt1” section of the Save the Cat beat sheet – meant I was making good progress when writing and optimised my working time on the train pretty effectively.

#This Week

It’s just a case of battering on with Marshall. Hopefully I can get the sequence up to the midpoint written by Wednesday, then spend Thursday and Friday editing that. That method seems to be working quite well so far.

Reader, a bit of honestly – I’m finding writing a bit of a struggle just now. I mean I’m over 43k into this book, so it’s going well but I’ve done a few of these British/Scottish crime books back-to-back now (Marshall 5/6 this year, OPERATION HIGH CONCEPT and the expansion of Dodds 1, as well as doing a self-structural edit on all three Max Carter books), so I feel like I need a change of pace after this.

First, I think Marshall 7 will be early next year rather than late this. Maybe going to a six-monthly cycle on those books will be fine for both sales and my mental health.

Second, I’ll be picking up an old sci-fi idea I had. It’s pretty cinematic but also political and thriller-y. I got inspired while I was in London and spent a bit of time thinking through the biggest problem I had – the villain motivation. In my experience, any story can only be as satisfying as the villain’s motivation is solid and understandable. Think about DIE HARD – that’s mostly Hans Gruber’s story and his plan, including the twist; all John McClane does is mess things up for him.

For this book – let’s call it OPERATION MOONSHOT – I had some stupid crass stuff which didn’t make any sense. I had a brief moment of inspiration that’s unlocked the whole thing for me. I had done two passes of a full outline for the book, but the crapness of the villain’s side meant it just went a bit boring and stupid. It might be quite repetitive, but I can pick and choose the best stuff from both, confident that I’ve got a really solid ending now. Or at least a solid villain motivation – that’ll give me the stuff I need to work through to getting a solid ending. And maybe inform a bit of the worldbuilding too. The trouble with writing police procedurals is you get so much stuff for “free”, in terms of the protagonist’s wants and goals etc, that you have to devise all these things.

I feel inspired again and that’s good. And it’s definitely hay fever season; the nosebleeds have started!

Cheers,
Ed

Hey,

Have you forgot about me?

I know, I forgot about last week’s. Bad Ed! But I was knackered from travel (stuck in Newcastle station for hours), so I’ll let myself off. Please do the same!

#Music

This week, it’s a cracking tune off the “debut” solo album by Beth Gibbons, her out of Portishead:

I say “debut” because she did a cracking album with Rustin Man about 20 years ago, called Out Of Season, which I thought was her debut solo. Anyway, both are amazing. And it’s staggering that it’s been sixteen years since the third (and underwhelming) Portishead album. What do these people do with that time?

Anyway, this is a lush track, hope you enjoy it. It’s quite sixties folk, but with a darkness like Nick Cave would add.

#Last Fortnight

Capital Crime was last weekend and I had a blast. I think it’s safe to say it’s the best crime festival in Britain now. An incredibly strong lineup and book sales, with a really good vibe about it. Saw a load of inspiring panels and caught up with some good pals I hadn’t seen in ages. Got a book signed by Irvine Welsh and went all fanboy, which was pretty embarrassing...

Okay, on the writing front, I’ve been getting stuck into Marshall 6. According to Scrivener, I’m at 31,674, but it feels like I’ve barely done any work to it. Travel has been disruptive, but it’s all good. I’m getting stuck in and that’s what counts.

On Saturday, I met up with George Blair, who is the secretary of the Beltane Festival in Peebles. When I broke the synopsis down to a chapter outline, I added a lot of local colour, in the form of Beltane stuff. It’s the town’s common riding, basically, so plays a huge role in local people’s lives. And I wanted to get it right. A few little mistakes here and there, but it was good to get my questions answered from the best expert there could be.

After that, I got lost in the woods trying to find the eastern entrance to Neidpath tunnel (AKA the half-mile tunnel). It’s not where Google Maps says it is. I had to give up and walk back to the town. Then I found it. And had a wee wander around it. Glad I did, because it confirmed a lot of details and tweaked a few things. But it’s pretty spooky in there. And my phone battery is knackered so went from 60% to 10 very quickly... And I walked back in the dark. Get me!

Guess where the body will be?

Also, my Facebook login got stuck in a loop where I can’t fix the two-factor identification so I’ve killed the account and will be starting a new one. Very, very frustrating.

#This Week

Trying a different approach and stockpiling some writing before I edit in bulk. Will see how that works. The tick-tock stuff has its strengths, but it’s hitting hay fever season so I’m feeling pretty sluggish, even if I might not actually be. Antihistamine is exhausting, even the non-drowsy stuff – just means it doesn’t induce a coma.

Have a good week!

Cheers,
Ed

Watcher, geezer/geezeress?

#Music

I’ve been obsessing with listening to Autechre over the last week. I very much doubt you’ll like them, but...

This is off LP5, their eponymous fifth album, which is widely regarded as the tipping point from their accessible earlier stuff to the abstract unlistenable electronic bleeps and clicks. They don’t so much write the music as programme it into a laptop, then get it playing sounds until they like what they hear. Dance music, it isn’t!

#Last Week

Okay, so my first big thing last week was breaking Marshall 6 down from a synopsis to an outline. This is mainly making sure I’ve got a certain number of chapters and a flow between them. The synopsis was mainly Marshall’s POV with some notes on other plot points – this is where I decide on who the other POVs are and make sure there are enough of them to make it not jarring. So there are two supporting POVs, one who hasn’t been done for a wee while and another who is a monster. Anyway, that was all done and sent off to edit, which was fairly minor. Lovely!

The other big task was finishing my edit of the Dodds 1 redraft. One of those things I shouldn’t have started, but I’ll be glad it’s done. The main driver for these was to get a better quality book over to Angus King for his narration. The first cut was done back-to-back with Vicky 4 and was a bit underbaked, so I’ve fleshed it out into a full novel now. Anyway, the book was finished on Saturday and is off to the proof reader – hopefully it’ll be back soon, then I can update stuff with the 2024 edition. As I’ve said before, anyone who has bought the ebook edition will get this one free on Amazon; it’s worth it for the new material!

#This Week

Started writing Marshall 6 this afternoon. Which involved me sorting through my old emails, sending off a few invoices and such. Because I’d outlined a chapter I wasn’t too keen on. The information from it comes out in the first four chapters of investigation, so it wasn’t working well for me. Anyway, I shifted back to an earlier one.

It’s partly why I asked for a preference on Facebook about opening chapters: killer’s POV; victim’s; discoverer’s? And there are some people who skip such a chapter, which baffles me, but what’s your preference?

The rest of this week will be getting into my pendulum motion of editing yesterday and writing today. 65 chapters to write, so it’s going to be a reasonable slog.

Looking like the release date will be 30th September.

And here’s a photo from Neidpath tunnel near Peebles.

I probably need to revisit at some point to refresh my nonexistent, as Pringle would say.

Have a good week – I’ll be at Capital Crime in that London this weekend. See you there?

Cheers,
Ed

Hey! Your jokes are always good, right?

#Music

Here you go – this is this week’s song, Here. By Pavement. Here:

I love this song, probably their best and least-wonky.

#Last Week

Okay, so the eagle-eyed among you will note that I didn’t do one of these last week. The plan had been to finish Dodds 1 edit, then do some work on Marshall 6, but I had an emergency edit to do, which took me about a week, but (hopefully) that means OPERATION HIGH CONCEPT is done. I’ll shut up about this now until I have some other news on this, however this comes out.

So I did some more work on Marshall 6, finishing some edits to the synopsis and getting back into that. I had this weird thing when I opened the file and was impressed by the idea and the level of detail in the synopsis, which is bizarre. I’d forgotten the idea and all the work I’ve done on it. A little bit of location research in Glasgow, that went a wee bit awry.

Did a bit of thinking on the release plan – it’s not going to be an August release, but looking likely for end of September. Just depends on how well I get on with the writing of it, planning to start it next week...

#This Week

Okay, so this week’s plan is break down the outline for Marshall 6 from the synopsis, which is hopefully a couple of days’ work, as it’s in a good place. Just fleshing out bits and bobs here and there, making things breathe and getting the flow going. I’ve done about half of it today and it’s gone pretty well. Probably be a wee bit shorter than the previous ones, but then I always say that and I’m always wrong.

Then it’ll be on to finishing off my edit of Dodds 1, which is closing in on 60k after 1/3 done and should more than creep over. In my editing, I was pretty pleased with how it’s been going, I have to say – it’s a much stronger execution of a decent story now.

#Stuff

I discovered this TV show I’ve heard nobody talking about called BABY REINDEER... Cough. Pretty much everyone is talking about it, but I binged it last week and enjoyed it. It’s dark and then goes into some weirder, darker places I really didn’t expect. Highly recommended, but if you’ve got experience of stalking or sexual abuse, go in heavily warned.

Have a look at this article in Saturday’s Scotsman about lil’ ol’ me:

Thinking of getting a few more birds. And contrary to the piece, I’ve actually since decided to name them – the one I’m holding there is Elliot, with Jolene her pal. If I get some more, it’ll be Vicky, Sharon and Chantal, probably.

Oh, and if you’re reading this on Monday and want to contribute a suggestion to the name of the Peebles boozer and entirely separate B&B in Marshall 6…

www.facebook.com/share/p/JUFwJp2kZQUUmx81

Have a great one!

Cheers,
Ed

Hi!

It’s me, Ed James. You know who I am, but for the avoidance of doubt, you’re reading this because you signed up to read the scribblings of a mad Scotsmans who writes crime novels about mad Scotsmen, Scotswomen and others, like English people and Americans.

Anyway, now that’s settled…

#Music

Been spending a lot of time flipping the LP of Spiderland by Slint over while I work this weekend. An incredible record that still sounds fresh 30 years on (gulp).

I saw them in 2004-ish in Glasgow when they reformed to do some shows. This album is pretty much perfect but I can’t get on with the other record or the EP. I had a similar thing with Brian McMahan’s other band, The For Carnation, whose self-titled LP is similarly perfect (actually, both have a less than perfect fifth track and a lower key third track), where I can’t stand the other album. Weird.

#Last Week

Last week was just ploughing through my expansion of Blood & Guts, ahead of Angus recording the definitive version later this year. It’s good to get some closure and finality to those books.

It’s been a lot of fun meeting Vicky and her team again. The book was a bit undercooked, I have to say. I think I did this as a free novella thing for the mailing list and it grew arms and legs as I wrote it, but it clearly didn’t get enough focus, as it was a bit rough around the edges. Anyway, I’ve gone from 34k to over 57k, mostly by drawing out the drama in chapters, dramatising the summarised (and there was a LOT of that), then adding in a few plot lines to thicken the mystery, stuff which was alluded to in the previous book but not given justice. And a whole eight-chapter sequence added which picks up on some threads and knits them all together (SPOILER: it’s got Cullen in it now). It’ll be ready to release in June, I think, with the audio coming later this year. Anyone who’s bought the ebook will get the new version free – sadly I can’t do the same for paperback, but I think there’s only a handful, at best.

#This Week

This week’s focus is getting back into Marshall and opening up the notes for book 6 to expand out into a detailed outline. As it’s very loosely based on The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner by James Hogg, I’ll be re-reading that too and the foreword, which is longer than the book! It’s only loosely based on it, but a few locations or grace notes and easter eggs might not go amiss.

I’ve got a synopsis and some character notes I need to thread together, then I need to decide on the format of the book – who gets time as POV character over and above Marshall. Hmmm. And obviously, who dies in this one. Might be Shunty’s time...

#Stuff

Nothing much to add, but I started watching FALLOUT on Amazon Prime and it was so good I watched the second episode immediately after. It nicely balances the grimdarkness of a post-apocalyptic setting with genuine humour and warmth. Hopefully it’ll maintain that level of quality. I loved the first hour of Fallout 4, but couldn’t get on with it after that – not really a fan of those clunky open world Bethesda games like Elder Scrolls.

Anyway, have a great week!

Cheers,
Ed

Hey you!

#Music

New Partner by Palace Music, an alt. country gem:

This is a live version of the song, performed by Will Oldham, under his Bonnie Prince Billy name. The original verision is superior but doesn’t have a video:

A beautiful song, isn’t it?

#Last Week

So I finished the pitch for the sequel, which I’m pretty pleased with it. What I try to capture at this stage is the villain’s plan and motivation. There’s a crime or crimes – who’s done it and why? Everything flows from that. The mystery should be in tandem with the suspense from their actions. That’s what I’ve learnt anyway – getting that nailed down makes the book worth writing.

There are two schools of writing, plotting and pantsing. Those who plot, like me, like to get everything down before they start and make sure the book is worth writing. Those who pants, i.e. write by the seat of your pants, like to discover the book from the writing. I’ve heard of a few writers in the latter camp who have no idea who did it until they get there, which makes me come out in hives. Even heard of someone changing the killer between drafts, which makes those hives spread all over my body.

This pitch is a decent exercise – it’s not about plot, it’s about character. Only character. Who did what, why and to whom. Then the others come in. Where, when and how all come in later, but should be consistent with the main idea. If that’s cast iron, then the rest of it can take place and be okay. And certainly worth writing. It takes a few twists of the knife to make sure the motivation is fresh enough and interesting. This one, for instance, started out as an idea I’ve tried and failed a few times. Something I loved but couldn’t execute on. I removed a few aspects and let it flow into other areas I hadn’t considered. Then it starts to take on a life of its own and becomes something else entirely.

It’s a similar thing to what a recording engineer said to me way back in the late 90s. If you write a song based on an acoustic guitar part strumming out chords, sometimes the song works better if you take that original part out, because the other parts (lead guitar, bass, drums) have taken on the rhythmic and harmonic aspects and it’s now redundant and crowding the mix.

Anyway, that’s now done and filed away.

I did some work on a secret one that’s shaping up well but is a bit tricky. Finished it on Thursday. Meant I could turn my brain off for the weekend.

So I started editing the first Vicky Dodds book.

Why the hell?

Well, Angus King will be narrating all five for new audiobook editions later in the year and this is my chance to finalise that book. It sort of grew arms and legs as I did it three years ago, developing out of a nugget from somewhere else and evolving. But it was pretty short, 34k, and could be stronger. So I’ve been editing through it over the weekend between bouts of gardening, i.e. when it was pissing down.

So far I’ve expanded the first 14 chapters to 25 (some new, most just splitting at apposite points), totalling 27,700 words. With ten to go, which is 14,300 of the old draft. I’m at the point where I want to punch in some new material, a whole new subplot which will thicken the broth nicely and make it a much more satisfying book. It’s pretty quick work while I wait on edits back and feels very productive. And quite soothing, actually. I’m aiming to make it roughly 60k, which is plenty long enough and will be a much stronger version. (Anyone who’s bought the Kindle edition will get this free as an update.)

#This Week

Just a case of ploughing on with revising Vicky Dodds, probably both editing the final 14k into something like 20k and adding about 10k of new material punched in. Also, probably shifting the story back a week from Christmas Eve to Hogmanay, as it feels a lot more like a Hogmanay book than a Christmas one.

And I need to start doing some prep around the launch of Marshall 5 and maybe do some work on Marshall 6.

I’ve got a few appearances coming up in May:

2nd May – Wedale Books at the Station House in Stow
Tickets: https://wedalebooks.scot/events

22nd May – Heron & Willow Books in Jedburgh
Tickets: http://heronandwillow.scot/product/may-22nd-ed-james

31st May – Capital Crime “Finding a Balance” panel with Vaseem Khan and Kellye Garrett
Ticket: https://www.capitalcrime.org/product-page/finding-the-balance (you can buy all-day and all-weekend passes too)

Be great to see you at any of them. Both bookshops got stocked up with signed editions last week too.

#Stuff

I’ve become one of those guys who’s getting back into vinyl. Dug out my dad’s old turntable, a Trio KD-2055 known by audiophiles as THE ROCK, and treated myself to a Cambridge phono stage/pre-amp to get it to line level to go into my amp. Took me a few goes to get the sound right as it was distorting badly on certain LPs, but it’s all working nicely now. There’s something to be said about the ceremony of turning records over when a side’s finished and all that, keeps the head fresh. It’s been nice getting reacquainted with some music I love, include Viva Last Blues, the Palace Music album New Partner comes from. I’d become pretty jaded with music, to be honest with you, and having literally every album ever available to you can become exhausting.

Anyway, enough from me. I need to get out with the dogs before it rains again.

Cheers,
Ed

Hey,

Happy Groundhog Day! I’ll be rewatching the film tonight, I think.

#Music

Speaking Groundhog Day, I think I might’ve shared this one before, but sod it. Here goes again:

21 minutes of prog jungle. I absolutely love this track. I heard it when I was 15/16 (well, the first “movement”). Jungle as it was then was a relatively new music form – it evolved into drum ’n’ bass without the rough edges and became so bland. The rest of the album is a bit weird, from some manic jungle workouts to some jazzy torch songs, but this track is something I regularly stick on to give my sub-woofer a workout (that’s not a joke at Al’s expense).

Jungle evolved out of the DJ culture of playing breakbeats (the gaps in old funk records where the drums were the only thing playing, like Funky Drummer by James Brown or the Amen break from Amen, Brother by the Winstons), which was the basis of hip hop. Jungle played the 33 records at 45, so they sped up quite considerably – as they were instrumental, they didn’t have the chipmunk vocals. So they were higher-pitched and faster and in your face. But the bass came from similar drops in dub reggae records, but these were 45s slowed down to 33, so slower and much, much deeper. The real “rattle your heart” deep sub bass you get on this song at about 2:40. The drums on this are the Amen break, but cut up in a sampler and reprogrammed into new patterns, sometimes the skittery chaos, sometimes looping a fragment for way too long to build tension. And the bass is a Roland 303 bass synth (which was designed for guitarists to play along with, a failure, and electronic musicians picked up cheap and developed the rubbery sound into Acid House) or maybe even the kick drum from a Roland 808 or 909, which are really really bassy things, but pitched up and down to give melody.

Anyway. That’s a bit of a digression and I doubt anyone cares!

#Last Week

Okay, so you left this intrepid author having finished the edits to Marshall 5, which is called With Soul So Dead. He then worked on editing another project, which took a day to get through, but is shaping up well.

He then picked up OPERATION HIGH CONCEPT, which he should’ve named as something different. Police operations don’t tend to be so on the nose, e.g. OPERATION WHO IS UNDER THE PATIO or OPERATION OLD FAMOUS PAEDOS, but stuff like YEWTREE. Anyway, had a chunk of edits there, plus a bit of a plot collapse 2/3 of the way through. A couple of days working on that and he realised it’s ready to start work on.

But what’s this? The edits for Marshall 5 came back and he worked on them on Friday. And, yes, on Saturday. A pass of the easy stuff happened on Friday, then Saturday morning was fixing his more egregious mistakes.

#This Week

But finish he most certainly did. This week he will be doing a read-edit of Marshall 5, hoping to finish it by Friday. Maybe. It’s quite tight now, he thinks, but just needs to have all the rough edges smoothed off.

And he’s really looking forward to writing OPERATION HIGH CONCEPT. Oh yes.

#Stuff

God knows why I did that in 3rd person but I can’t be bothered to edit it.

Spent my off time last week watching the fifth season of FARGO. The first three seasons are up there with anything and the fourth is an awfully boring mess I abandoned quite quickly. But the fifth was a real return to form. Was. Until the last two episodes, it was a perfect distillation of what made FARGO FARGO, brutal domestic setups with bizarre real-life comedy. And the last two episodes were just flat, with a baffling final scene. Shame.

This is a boring bit. I shifted this newsletter from Substack to Beehiiv, mainly because, y’know, Substack tolerates and monetises actual nazis so I won’t no part of that (I barely use Twitter for the same reason). But the deliverability is nowhere near as good, as far as I can make out.

Anyway, I’ve made some changes so hopefully you’ll get this from ed@edjames.co.uk – please reply to this and let me know if you get it!

Here’s a really interesting interview Justin Hawkins did with Rick Astley last week, which is absolutely fascinating:

"I Feel Like Everyone Thinks I'm a Tw*t"

🎫 Tickets for Justin Hawkins Rides Again tour in London & Liverpool: https://tinyurl.com/kneukve2Today I am joined by the legendary Rick Astley! It was suc...

www.youtube.com/watch?v=8g69MYhpwJY

Have a great one!

Cheers,

Ed

Hey!

In case you haven’t got it, Marshall 4 is in the UK’s Kindle Daily Deal today:

A Shadow on the Door (DI Rob Marshall Scottish Borders Police Mysteries Book 4) eBook : James, Ed: Amazon.co.uk: Kindle Store

A Shadow on the Door (DI Rob Marshall Scottish Borders Police Mysteries Book 4) eBook : James, Ed: Amazon.co.uk: Kindle Store

www.amazon.co.uk/Shadow-Marshall-Scottish-Borders-Mysteries-ebook/dp/B0CD5JY1R8/ref=s9_acsd_al_ot_c2_x_6_t?_encoding=UTF8&pf_rd_m=A1F83G8C2ARO7P&pf_rd_s=merchandised-search-3&pf_rd_r=KQS0SPKMXP8451HZNB1Z&pf_rd_p=f0dc210a-887c-4bf3-97c0-95d4ee777b29&pf_rd_t=&pf_rd_i=5400977031

#Music

Such a baffling world where the music of arch space rock pioneers Spiritualized is used on the adverts for the National Lottery. I suspect J Spaceman, as he was known in his Spacemen 3 days, is getting a lottery win of cash for that. Maybe not the full six balls, but a five balls and a bonus.

(Reminds me of the very first ever draw in the mid-90s – a guy in my class at school got 5 balls and a bonus. The next week, he would’ve won £500k, but because it was so over-subscribed that week, he won £550. I think!)

Spiritualized - Always Together With You (Official Music Video)

‘Always Together With You’ taken from the forthcoming Spiritualized album “Everything Was Beautiful’ https://spzd.lnk.to/everythingwasbeautifulYTDirector: J...

www.youtube.com/watch?v=ME0ji3o05UQ

#Last Week

My goal was to finish the draft and finish the draft I did. On Thursday! Which is earlier than I expected. Some edits on Friday, three new chapters and bingo bongo it’s done.

Slightly concern that the book is running a wee bit short at the moment, but I could see when I went into a chapter to edit something that there’s probably plenty of scope for expanding it when I come to edit it in a few weeks’ time, so it’ll end up around the same length.

One of the biggest tricks I’ve learned in how to speed up writing is to not get bogged down in fixing errors as they happen. For example, I’d written a few chapters in this book set in Innerwick, a village inland from Dunbar in East Lothian, which isn’t far from the coastal Borders area, AKA Berwickshire (though neither Berwick-upon-Tweed nor North Berwick are in it, and there was a North Berwickshire until East Lothian was created – boring, I know!). But I wanted to bring to life the area that’s actually in the Borders, so I decided to shift those chapters to Reston, which is where my dogs came from and where they go into kennels when I’m away. But I decided this about 2/3 of the way through, after I’d written the chapters, so I made a note in my actions log to fix that, then any references to it in that final 1/3 were made as if I’d made the changes. I went back in and fixed them – there’s only usually a paragraph at most of set up, then it’s inside someone’s house or whatever, so it’s weirdly a minimal fix. Sounds confusing and it would be if you somehow hacked my computer and read the file on Thursday, but I got to the end and Saturday morning’s file would be (mostly) fine and consistent. Always good to have a solid read-edit after making all those changes as continuity can get very very messy.

And I don’t recommend doing that if your book needs open heart surgery, as in the problems are manifold. Then it’s best to step back, figure out how to fix them, then make the changes there and then. Then probably read it all back before you plough on with the rest of it. I’ve had to do this a few times, though TOUCH WOOD not for a while now.

Note: I add these writing tips in the case it might help someone else think of their own process differently, whether that’s in writing or just in general. Hopefully they’re interesting!

Anyway, I’ve got nice feeling of relief there, until I get my teeth kicked out in the editing... It left me a chance to do some garden stuff yesterday, shifting some benches, tables, boulders and smaller stones around, but it’s neater. I’m probably going to plant up some beds, but that’s a lot of work and I need a few weeks of better weather rather than a day. Bring on Spring!

#This Week

Okay, so it’s a different kind of work now. Picking up little bits and bobs in the space between sending the book off and getting the edits back. I’ve got a few chapters to edit of something, which I’ve been doing this morning, then I want to rework and edit the outline for OPERATION HIGH CONCEPT. Maybe even craft a few chapters of that to make sure I get the different voices of both characters nailed down. It’s all go, but it’s all good!

#Stuff

I’ve spent a lot of time over the last fortnight reading rather than other stuff. I seem to flit between different hobbies, which is very me. Anyway, I finished reading “The Trouble With Peace” by Joe Abercrombie, the second of his Age of Madness trilogy. I’m not really a fan of fantasy novels, but these are something else entirely. He’s one of few writers who I’m just absolutely blown away by on multiple levels. He writes scenes and chapters in a very similar way to me – no exposition or info dumps, just all dramatic action. But his overall story arcs are breathtaking, weaving together a multitude of POV characters into a coherent and satisfying story, with big culmination points which could literally go in any direction. I’m romping through the final volume, then I’ve got two short story collections to read and I’ll be all done with his work. But it won’t be too long before I re-ready the whole nine-book (plus short stories) saga again.

Anyway, enough about me – have fun this week!

Cheers,
Ed