Plans, unplans and Whitby

A few things of note have happened over the last couple of weeks, a mixture of highs and lows really, which I thought I’d summarise in this post, mostly for the sake of brevity as not everyone wants to read a blog entry of a couple of thousand words (believe me, the original post was that long!), but also because I don’t want to blow all the detail before I’m interviewed by Un:Bound this weekend. So here goes…

The Black Hours
I’d love to start with the good news. But it isn’t that good. It isn’t that bad, let me make that clear now, but it’s not the news every writer wants to hear. After reading through the third draft Pan Macmillan have decided to pass on The Black Hours, mainly for the reasons alluded to in my blog entry last month (see here). I wasn’t surprised, mainly because as soon as it was received there was a hesitancy about where The Black Hours sat in the great scheme of my career. After the readings it was agreed that it couldn’t be marketed as an “MFW Curran” book. It’s quite different to The Secret War, perhaps too different (it’s not a fantasy book) and that pretty much swung the decision not to publish – at least for the time being. The Black Hours is therefore shelved until after the Secret War series is complete and I can think about where I go from there. So yep, I’m gutted, especially as the book might have been published under MNW as a debut novel. But as an “MFW Curran” book, it just doesn’t follow the script.
Having said that, Pan Macmillan are very keen to groom me as fantasy writer – a brand name, so I’m pleased they think so highly of me. Gutted, yeah, but pleased.

Whitby
We went to Whitby at the weekend. It’s not really news, but a worthy reason to post some lovely photos of Whitby Abbey, the man-o-war “The Grand Turk”, and me taking a turn on the wheel. Other than to take a well-earned break before the baby arrives, the other reason was to seek some Gothic inspiration – after all it is said Dracula landed in Whitby, though I doubt his reason for visiting was for its famous fish and chips. Nor would it be for the truly excellent second hand bookshops, where I spent quite a bit of dosh on deleted out of print copies of Philip Jose Farmer and Michael Moorcock novels.

But for me, the most valuable find was The Grand Turk, a sixth-rated frigate purpose built for the TV series Hornblower. It’s the perfect size and rating for the Iberian, the ship that features heavily in The Secret War and briefly again in The Hoard of Mhorrer, so this was a particularly joy. After the beguiling first moments of walking alongside her, and then boarding the ship to wander the decks, I was struck by the size – or rather how narrow the deck was and sheepishly realised that perhaps the description of the battle aboard the Iberian isn’t that accurate. Still, artistic license aside, if I get a chance to alter the battle in a later edition of The Secret War, I’ll pay the Grand Turk another visit (maybe even hire a few hundred people to act out the battle for me!)
Anyway, it’s quite possible that Matt Curran and the Grand Turk will be reunited in the near future, as after walking the ship I got talking to one of the owners/deck-hands and we started chatting about the various tours and trips the Grand Turk undertakes – with paying passengers. Better still you can book the captain’s cabin for voyages across to the continent, and sail in comfort while experiencing the joys of tall-ship sailing “on a fully armed and operational battle-ship*”.
And the timing is perfect. Well, nearly so. Money permitting, the Grand Turk undertakes voyages from Spring to late Summer, and with the planned commencement of The Fortress of Black Glass in September this would be the perfect spark for inspiration.

*Geeky Note: Try reading this bit in Ian McDiarmid’s Emperor Palpatine voice ala Return of the Jedi

The Fortress of Black Glass
Just a brief bit on this, but the first chapter is taking shape, and after speaking to my editor, we both agree this looks like a stonking start to the third book: It opens in a Danish city that is besieged by pestilence and poverty, and follows a funeral procession to the city’s cathedral. It ends with a devastating battle between two Dar’uka in the cathedral that reverses the opening chapter to The Hoard of Mhorrer. The two Dar’uka, Ishmael and Marresca, fight to the death as the mourners flee in terror, leaving its beleaguered archbishop to confront the victor. It will be gothic, it will be terrifying; it will be explosive and unrelenting.
And it’ll pretty much set the tone and pace for the rest of the novel.
I can’t wait!

Sci-Fi London
Okay. Some not so good news now, and once more I’m a bit gutted ‘cos the timing for this is rubbish. I’ve been invited to attend the panels at Sci-Fi London, discussing everything from dystopias to pandemics in fiction and movies, but it pretty much clashes with fatherhood and I can’t ask the baby to wait to arrive until after the convention, so it looks like I’ll be bowing out.
Which sucks.
But in the spirit of optimism, I’ll be a father then, which will be fantastic! I’ve put my name down for next year, so with a little luck you’ll find this bearded writer talking all things bloody and fantastical.

Un:Bound
And finally, and briefly, I’m being interviewed for Un:Bound blog, and in a twist it will be a face to face, which hardly ever happens with magazines, let alone blogs. I’ll post a link here once the interview is up and running on the site (hopefully Hagelrat will squeeze some coherence out of my ramblings after several pints at the Devonshire Cat pub!).

Music to kill things by

You might have noticed from the last post and this one, that I’m having a renaissance. A little musical one - and about time too, I reckon. After a stale period where I must have bought only a dozen or so CDs in six years, I’ve been embarking on a musical-buying frenzy. In the last three weeks I’ve bought more music than films or books and it’s been most helpful, particularly with the writing.
I’ve added the new U2 album, a couple of REM albums, a Muse masterpiece, the most recent Verve album and several soundtracks to my dusty collection that hasn’t seen anything new in months. And they’ve been worth their weight and more, in gold: you see, the score to The Dark Knight has gotten me through the hardest patch of creativity I’ve had in a long time…

Two weeks ago, I started plotting the chapter synopsis for The Fortress of Black Glass (the new third book in the Secret War series), and it didn’t come easily.
The scuppering of The Traitor of Light had knocked the plans for the series out of kilter, and I was thrown into Book 4 without even sight of Book 3 - and all that entailed, including machinations, revelations and motivations unwritten and unrealised.
My own motivation had been hit also. I was winding down in preparation for fatherhood, and thinking about The Fortress of Black Glass was unexpected -
(you see, this is usually my down-time between projects, where I can think about a number of books I want a write over the next few years, books such as Frontier, and my coastal horror story, The God of all Storms – but nothing in too much detail). I now found myself in that intense planning stage for a book I wasn’t expecting to write until 2010, and it’s been bloody hard to motivate myself to think about it, not to mention my ability to get into the right mood.

And mood is the key. It really is.

The first draft of the chapter synopsis was sketchy at best. It wasn’t really a synopsis, just a wish-list, but one that wouldn’t tie together. It was like having an assortment of bricks without any mortar. By themselves they looked like they could work as a story – somehow – but I had no idea how to turn them into a great story. I just wasn’t in that place. The plot lacked depth, it lacked emotion. It lacked the darkness I wanted from the final book.
And I despaired.
I have never embarked on a project without motivation, without desire before. But looking at this one I was in serious danger of doing so. I’m not that superstitious, but I’m practical, and realised if I had no love for this book, I wouldn’t write it. The Fortress of Black Glass looked doomed.

And so we come to the music. That sweet, dark music…

Over the previous weekend I watched The Dark Knight again in that absent way you watch something if you’ve seen it too many times, like playing Star Wars or Aliens from a DVD in the background while you’re washing-up or doing the ironing. Don’t get me wrong, I love The Dark Knight. It was one of the finest movies of last year, but I’ve watched it too many times now to be without distraction. In this instance, I was reading a magazine, thinking about other things, yet throughout, something new did take my attention: the film score. By Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard, the score is not overly bombastic like a John Williams score; it sits in the background, layering mood and atmosphere, building suspense and menace or action, carefully, without being too pervasive. In essence, it is the perfect soundtrack to write a suspenseful book to - and if not writing the actual book, then at least planning one.

I guess there is a danger that in listening to a music score, you automatically think of the film, especially if it is a thematic movie, such as the Batman films, or Lord of the Rings, or Gladiator, or Harry Potter. The main theme-tunes are so obvious you’d recognise them if you heard them in a video store or on the high-street, or on the radio. But not so with The Dark Knight. Like I said, it’s not in your face, it’s not definable. I don’t associate the stoic marching of the main theme with Christian Bale’s stern Bruce Wayne, nor the hair-raising chords of the menacing Joker theme.

In fact, over the last week or so, I’ve associated them with scenes from the new Secret War book, such as William Saxon standing before Castle Draak with two thousand Habsburg soldiers behind him – a prelude before the spectacular siege in the book; or the scenes of William and Marco sailing on a frigate bound for England, the ship rocking in stormy sees under slate-coloured skies. I can see Marresca’s duel with the new Dar’uka recruit, Ishmael; the attempted kidnapping of Baroness Wlassics; William’s solemn return to Fairway Hall and his vengeance on Henry Grendell; Adriana sobbing on the balcony of their villa; Kieran’s grim prophecy. All this from one soundtrack.

I now had the mood. It was the mortar for the story and I wrote again the chapter synopsis, describing key scenes and moments, jotting down shards of dialogue that could be used and illustrated the point better than a couple of paragraphs would.

In the end, a chapter synopsis that was meant to be around 6,000 words and 20 pages long, stands now at 10,000 words and is 35 pages long. And bloody hell, this looks like a great book. I wanted a dark third novel in the Secret War series, and this really is it. I’m certain of it. It will be epic, fantastical, bloody, and don’t expect everyone to make it to the finishing line. It will also be a very gothic book in style – something my editor believes I do very well judging by the initial reading of The Black Hours – but it will be another page turner.
Against all other criticisms, the Secret War books are universally seen as a series of compelling novels with an unrelenting pace, and this one will be no different. But this time I won’t be sacrificing character for pacing. I’ll be doing both, and I reckon I have enough tools in the box to achieve that.
I want the characters to stand out in this their swan-song, and what characters there’ll be: other than William Saxon and Marco - Adriana, Engrin and Jericho will also return. As will the Dar’uka (with a greater presence than the first two books). Cardinal Devirus, Marresca, Andreas, Cardinal Grisome and Baron Horia also have larger roles than the previous books. But there’ll be new characters too such as the domineering Baroness Wlassics, the bawdy papal agents: Mallinder and Staley, the antagonistic General Strauss of the Habsburg Empire. And of course, we’ll get close and personal with Count Ordrane.
And the battles… Bloody hell, we’ll be in for a treat there. Dar’uka vs Dar’uka, armies of vampyres and daemons fighting across mountain chasms, sieges with cannon, skirmishes in Transylvanian streets, and then there’s that duel with Count Ordrane…
My editor says it sounds “epic” and I guess that’s the point, and the point of this blog. You see, when I was plotting the book, it wasn’t epic. It felt small. But listening to the soundtrack to The Dark Knight made if feel more epic, as well as dark. It gave me a lift when I needed it the most. It inspired me when everything else failed.

It simply got me in the mood to write about killing…

Please listen…

For me, inspiration comes from what I can read, what I can watch, and equally, what I can hear. A song or a movie score can provoke images and story as much as reading something in the newspaper, watching something on telly, or observing someone while I sit and have coffee. For that reason, my mp3 player is never far away, and there is a CD player in every room in the house, apart from the bathroom.
Music inspires.

But not albums - let me make that clear. Because it’s very rare that an entire album can carry off inspiration fully, deviating as they often do through changing moods and landscapes. I can never quite come up with a story with an album in mind. But a mix-tape? Well, that’s different. With a mix-tape I can stick together like-minded music, music that describes the scenes in my head perfectly.
And I am no stranger to mix-tapes.

When I was a teenager, I had more mix-tapes than I had tapes of albums. More often than not, mix-tapes would be almost identical, apart from one or two songs. There is an order to mix-tapes. You can’t just throw them together on a whim. Each song must compliment the previous one – like a jigsaw puzzle, or the way paragraphs are ordered on the page. There’s a discipline to mix-tapes (which is why I pull my hair out when someone puts a mix-CD on shuffle – what is the point?!!). With the introduction of recordable CDs, mix-tapes were easier to make, had more space to add tracks, and were a perfect medium... until the mp3 player arrived.

Play-lists have become the new mix-tapes. And I have numerous play-lists on my mp3 player, mostly play-lists for each of the books I’ve written and will write. Frontier, for example, has been foremost in my thoughts. The setting of the story is “Sweat and Oil” Sci-Fi, where frontiersmen clatter about in junk-ships, moving from planet to planet as long their craft can sustain them, where societies are as lawless as those in the first decades of the “Wild West”, where prostitution, gambling and drinking are rife, because there’s nothing much else to do. No one knows how things work any more, the science that moves them from place to place, or creates breathable atmospheres on alien worlds, is lost because they are so far removed from the centre of civilisation: Earth. It’s anarchic. It’s dystopian. And boy, it’s playing in my head like a movie trailer, moving from a relative short teaser of a couple of minutes, to a ten or fifteen minute preview. I won’t say too much about the plot here - it’s still being formed from my grey-matter - but the mood will be Blade-Runner meets The Unforgiven. Very gritty. Very dark.

Will it be the next novel I write after the Secret War trilogy is completed? Maybe. We’ll see. But for now, I only have the trailer in my head - that and a list of songs that form a soundtrack to Frontier.
Before now, I could only list what these songs were below, but Amazon has allowed me to share my “mix-tape” with you. So to the right, below the quoted reviews for my books, is an mp3 player with partial versions of the songs that has inspired Frontier. So please feel free to listen, and/or download them from Amazon - you may have some of these tracks already, but if not, give them a go. You shouldn't be too dissapointed...

The Loneliness of the Book-signing Writer

Over the weekend, whilst doing some ad-hoc shopping, I wandered into a high-street bookshop to 1) look for copies of my books (- I’ve given up thinking this is a sad thing to do, as quite frankly most writers will look for their own book in whatever bookshop they go into, be it a high-street bookseller, remainder bookshop, or even second hand), and 2) look for a copy of Iain Banks’ Walking on Glass (after reading The Bridge recently, I’m going through a Banks revival).
I did find a copy of The Secret War, I’m pleased to say, though Walking on Glass seemed to be the only Banks book not on the shelf, so I later ordered it off one of the alternative sellers on Amazon (which I tend to do more and more these days – I tell myself if I’m using one of the “alternative” sellers on Amazon, and not Amazon itself, it’s not soooo bad).
What I also found, to my surprise, was an author doing a planned book-signing. And it wasn’t a signing where they’d just stuck the author in the back, hoping for people to discover them. Nope. They’d stuck her right at the front of the shop, amongst the bestseller shelves, the discount offers, and the Richard and Judy book-club displays. Stuck her behind a large table, with a large display behind her, with a mountain of books laid out on the table.

And not one shopper approached her while I was there.

I was in the store for twenty minutes, perhaps more. And through curiosity, I never strayed that far from the writer and her display. I wanted to see what happened, like some voyeur, not because I was interested in her suffering, but because I wanted to see the joy experienced when someone did approach her. But no one did. She sat behind that desk with a look of hope, trying not to catch anyone’s eye, but not being aloof either, sitting by herself, with that mountain of unsigned books about her. And it wasn’t my imagination that led me to believe she looked just a little crushed.
I could have approached her myself, and might have, but she was writing in a genre I have little interest for and the only common ground was that I too was a writer, and would ask how it’s going, knowing that it was going quite badly. That would have felt like a pity-visit, like a pat on the back for a writer that was probably ahead of me down the career-line.
So I let her sit alone, watching people come and go, some giving her a quick glance, others ignoring her completely. She watched people buy other books from the discount tables, from the bestselling shelves. I didn’t see her books on either. It was quite desperate, considering that a few months before in the same shop I saw people queuing out of the store and down the side of it for a book-signing by Wayne Rooney’s wife. And I have no doubt that whatever this author’s book was about, it would be damned more interesting that Coleen Rooney’s biography. It’s sad.

When I walked out to meet up with Sarah twenty minutes later, I said to her: “See that writer? I bet she wants to kill her agent…”

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In January 2007, while the hardback of The Secret War was finding its way onto book shelves, Will Atkins asked me what I would like to do in terms of publicity. That’s the great thing about Macmillan New Writing – other than self-publicity, MNW pimps your books around the publicity route under the secure guidance of its editor (Will) and press-officer (Sophie) so you know you’re in good hands. I suggested a couple of things, but when I mentioned doing book-signings, Will smiled awkwardly and explained that this wouldn’t be the best idea in the world. He told me a tale about an author who wanted the same thing. They had set up a perfectly good book-signing in a perfectly situated book-shop, and they waited for a few hours, with a table, and a stack of books to sign. Shoppers came and went. No one approached the table. Only a couple of books were signed and sold. It was crushing, mainly for the writer, but also for Will as he could see the confidence draining out of them. It was mortifying. A massive rejection, and in public. Thankfully, it was one that I didn’t have to experience, personally, because immediately after hearing this, I scaled down my publicity activities.

Last year, whilst visiting York, I witnessed a similar thing – a debut author, being published by an independent imprint, signing books to no one in a major high-street store. He looked hopeful that someone would come over to him, but no one did. Admittedly I was only there for about fifteen minutes, and who knows, there might have been a flood of readers prior to that, but his expression told me it was a quiet day at the office. And there’s nothing like trying to keep appearances after a couple of hours of neglect. I’ve never had to keep the mask of serenity for that long, knowing inside I want to be anywhere else but there. And it always looks worse when there’s a stack of unsigned books in front of them.

And it isn’t just mid-list or debut authors that suffer this. My sister went to a book signing of a well-known crime writer (a bestselling author no less) in an event at Manchester’s Waterstones. It was a lunch-time thing, so it would have been mercifully short, and Louise expected to be queuing around the block, waiting for her stack of paperbacks to be signed. She was pretty much the first in the queue as it happened, and she arrived in the middle of the signing. Once more, shoppers didn’t approach him. The writer was sat with his agent, pleased in that hopeful way that at least someone will ask for a signed copy, and while Louise was able to talk to him for a while at least (there was no one else there), it wasn’t exactly a successful signing for the author. The fact is, Louise was one of a very tiny minority – and that’s for a bestselling author signing in one of the biggest bookshops in one of the biggest cities in the UK.

Maybe shoppers in the UK are shy when it comes to these things, that seeing an author sign books is a curiosity, but not something that will urge them to find out more. Or maybe we are gripped too much by celebrity, that these days marrying a footballer is more worthwhile than writing something of value. Something worth queuing for. I remember reading in a newspaper (ironically) that celebrity was a cancer that was eating away at true merit, and this kind of illustrates the point.
Again, it’s quite sad.

I have nothing but the greatest respect for writers who do book-signings. But I’m not sure I am ready for one myself, nor have I the kudos to carry it off right now. So these days I slip into bookshops unannounced, ask the managers if they want me to sign their stock, and then I slip out again. Which works for me. It’s quick, and it’s painless. And because signed books sell faster, it pays too.

As for the loneliness of the book-signing writer – well I’ve decided that, should I see something like this happen again, I’ll go over. I won’t say I’m a writer, just an interested punter, and I’ll make small talk. I might even buy a copy of their book. A lot of UK shoppers are like sheep, in a way, and if they see someone queuing up for something, they’ll tend to queue too out of curiosity. Who knows, maybe they’ll get something more of out it than the insipid ramblings of a rags to celeb story of a twenty-something who has little experience of life for it to be an interesting read. Who knows?
But at least the author will get some gratification. Writers have feelings as well, you know…

Man Flu Hoards and Critical Confessions

Well, firstly a big confession. I did bugger all on World Book Day. I didn’t write, and I did very little reading. I did have a small bout of ‘Man Flu’, however, after some inconsiderate @!£! decided to sneeze and cough all over me on the bus earlier this week – and as a result my eyes and head were too sore to concentrate on the computer screen or the printed page for prolonged periods.
But that’s okay, I’m the last person to admit that I need some time off for good behaviour after running about metaphorically for the last, oh, several months or so; it will have done me some good to take a breather.

Anyway, in my absence there’s been another review of The Hoard of Mhorrer over on Un:Bound (click here to check it out), and for reasons of impartiality, there’s been a so-so review of The Secret War over on Highlander’s blog (click here). And if you were ever curious about the interview I did for Sci-Fi Now magazine but didn’t get a copy of issue 24, those kind folks have reprinted it on their website, so check it out here.

Other than that, I’ve started work on a blow by blow chapter plan which should give me - and Pan Macmillan – an idea of what to expect from The Fortress of Black Glass. I admit, I’m still a bit sore over missing out on The Traitor of Light, but I’m still excited about writing the new book. It’ll be a monster of a novel. Something to surpass the two previous efforts. And it will have its own problems, I’m certain, but I like a challenge…

Restraint and the art of Adaptation

Last Friday I met my publisher. I had preconceptions about how the meeting would go, and how I hoped it would go; and I suppose it won’t surprise many writers reading this that it didn’t go quite the way I planned. In one fell swoop I saw immediate plans go up into little flames. But you know what they say about best laid plans? Well stick a phoenix in there and perhaps you’ll come close to how the meeting proceeded.

So what happened? Well, I went into the meeting hoping to steer it one way – letting my imagination boil over with possibilities – but my publisher reined me in and forced me to focus. I felt like a pupil with a talent for running. Before me is the longest running track in the world. It stretches forever, is straight, flat, and the surface is smooth to the eye, like new tarmac. It is, quite frankly, the perfect running track. And I just want to run. And run my way. I want to feel the air slapping my face, the sun against my skin, the muscles in my legs working flat out. I want to feel the exhilaration. And I don’t want to stop, letting only my instincts guide me. I don’t see the traps, the elements of danger that could so easily halt my progress.
But my publisher does.
The publisher knows there are cracks along the way; there are parts where the track sinks, where razor-sharp undergrowth curls through pits in the surface, its fronds snaring all unsuspecting runners. And my publisher does what any publisher would do – it reins me in, even if I personally don’t see the reasons why at first.

You see, I’m being “grown”. That’s the official stance at Macmillan. They are trying to turn me into a brand name, much the same way Brian McGilloway has been. Our compost is a series of books – Brian has Inspector Devlin, I have William Saxon. It’s necessary to make that point from the off because unwittingly my first two books are down to one character rather than the themed series that the character inhabits. I always believed that I was writing Secret War-themed books, yet in fact by wrapping the first two books around the flawed character of William Saxon, I’ve caught myself writing William Saxon books instead, which makes a whole lot of difference in how you’re perceived by publishers and readers. I have inadvertently created conventions for my writing, which are now wrapped up in expectation.

The Traitor of Light was to be a departure from this. Too big a departure as I found out. Firstly, William Saxon would have been relegated to but a dozen pages or so, in a 300 page book. Secondly, the main protagonists would have been the “faux” deus ex machina – the Dar’uka - rather than the more imperfect and vulnerable human characters of the first two novels.I had planned to see these enigmatic killing machines reduced to flawed and ignorant gods that had just as many cracks as their mortal counterparts. I wanted to write their histories behind their inner-conflicts. I wanted to send the reader back to 15th century South America, to a time of genocide and reluctant heroes, and then to the surface of Mars itself for a battle between angels and demons.

I really wanted to send the reader to Hell… But these plans amounted to a very different Secret War novel.

Apart from William Saxon being largely absent, it would have been more Sci-Fi/Fantasy than Historical Adventure too. And that’s not all; stylistically it would be different (third person and present tense perspectives in one novel), yet ultimately it would be dispensable, and here’s where the final nail lands: ultimately you wouldn’t need to read The Traitor of Light before reading The Fortress of Black Glass.

Logically, then, it didn’t need to be written. My initial reaction to the proposal to dump book 3 was bewilderment and just a little frustration. I had readers who wanted me to write a Dar’uka book. I wanted to write a Dar’uka book, and I wanted a challenge stylistically. I didn’t want to feel I was writing the same thing over and over, feeling it would descend past tongue in cheek (which it is in parts) to complete parody. I am a new writer. I need to grow, but I need to grow down the path that interests me.

I guess they were my first thoughts. But now I can see what’s happened and why my publisher sought to shelve The Traitor of Light.

Being a new writer – a new writer who has embarked on a series of genre novels - doesn’t mean I have the freedom to reinvent myself at will; and breaking a formula so soon in a series pretty much does that. It throws a burgeoning readership a curve ball, one they might not catch. It’s a risk too far. A career-breaking risk, and one Macmillan are reluctant to make, and one that really, I don’t have to make. Like I said, you could read The Fortress of Black Glass without having to read The Traitor of Light. The Traitor of Light is a companion book, and taking a risk on a companion book is probably a daft thing to do even though it goes against my writing instincts (could I have pulled it off? I liked to think so…).

So for the first time – and probably not the last – I have broken from my instincts and gone with experience. My publisher isn’t trying to hold me back, they have too much invested in me to do so, and Macmillan has over a hundred years experience from being one of the biggest publishers in the business, while I have but two years, give or take. And it’s for those reasons that the next book I write will be The Fortress of Black Glass.

It wasn’t the plan I had in mind, but I’ve learned that plans rarely remain intact. In this game, they are protean and those who plan them have to be protean as well, having to adapt and restrain themselves.

The Black Hours is also part of that change – a book that was written outside the schedule and is at the moment on the margins looking in, feeling a little precarious because it doesn’t fit my brand name, but hoping at some point to be part of it, or have a brand-name of its own. Macmillan are reading it and will make a decision soon, but whether or not it will see publication will depend largely on the strategy they have in mind for me. It’s quite possible that The Black Hours will see publication after The Fortress of Black Glass, or if it is published before, it will go under the nom de plume of “Frank Wallace” to let it stand out from the Secret War books.
That’s all dependent, of course, on whether they like it – I was never contracted to write The Black Hours, but I’m hopeful. And using a different moniker isn’t all bad.

In fact, it could be a blessing.

A pseudonym enables me to embark on other series (such as Smith, Stranded Rooms, The Last Trilogy etc) but still have the freedom to break away to write one-offs (such as The Necromancers, Three Dead Boys, Chapel Hulme Welcomes Careful Drivers etc) while mid-series. Sure, it’s not “MFW Curran”, but it’s still the same writer. It’s still me.
As a creative writer I admit to feeling a tad frustrated. But as an author looking for a career in writing, pragmatically I don’t – I feel relieved, because my publisher really wants to continue this relationship, and is trying their damnedest to rein me back for mine and their benefit, i.e. to guarantee success and a long career.

To demonstrate this, they have made me a proposal: by Autumn this year I will have penned the first chapters of The Fortress of Black Glass and a 20 page synopsis. If that confirms what they already suspect – that they have a monster ending to the Secret War books - Macmillan will offer me a contract, and probably an advance, to complete the trilogy. It’s a great position to be in – an enviable position.

And it doesn’t mean The Traitor of Light will never see the, er, light of day either. It could be a project I slice down into novellas or short stories, that I write when I can, getting published where I can, in the independent press probably. I really like the idea of penning a Dar’uka novella or anthology, and I think time will be the only obstacle getting that done eventually. It just means adapting my previous plans, that’s all.

So the running track is before me. I know where the cracks are now. Macmillan has cut away the threatening undergrowth, and it looks as smooth as ever. They will release me to run my way eventually. But I’m new. I’m inexperienced, and sometimes, no matter how frustrating it feels, there are reasons for restraint.

I just need to learn to adapt, that’s all.