Christmas in the summer

 I have finally completed my last edit on my novel A MAN CALLED GREGOR - preview of the cover here:

Lauren's search for her uncle makes her question everything she believed in.
Available on Amazon as a Kindle and as a paperback from June 2019.

This means that I need to start on my Christmas novel, the idea or perhaps I should say the ideas for which have been going around in my head for a good few weeks now. It is a bit strange to write about Christmas and frost and snow when outside my window the swifts and swallows are dashing about, proclaiming that summer is here. But once I get started, I become lost in the world I'm writing about.

I usually start out with a character and a problem they are experiencing. I don't plan out the chapters, as some very organised authors do. Instead, I write by the "seat of the pants" method, which means sitting down every morning with no clear idea where the story is going to go. By the time I have done my tenth or twelfth edit, the whole thing will be completely different to what I started off with.  I'll have written and discarded tons of pages, well let's say around a hundred or so. Some of the characters will have been axed while others are added or changed to be completely different to my original idea. Yes, it's hard work but it is also a lot of fun. And viewing the finished product is worth all that sweat and all the hours put in.