In limbo

My new manuscript—which from now on I’ll refer to as RD—is finished and has just been set loose on unsuspecting publishing types. While I wait for a response, I’ve tentatively started another book in a similar vein, in the hope I can find a publisher for RD and that they’ll want more of the same, only different.

Like RD, this new book will be fairly complex and no doubt quite difficult to write, but short and probably it’ll be described as ‘literary’. (To give you an idea, Aliya read and critiqued—very very well—RD, and subsequently described it as Ian McEwan mixed with Richard Adams (that’s the fellow who wrote Watership Down). A description I can live with quite happily. In return I attempted to compare the Lena and Pru mysteries with a mix of authors and plumped for Andy McNab meeting Alexander McCall Smith down a dark alley. Can anyone else more widely read than me come up with a better comparison?

Anyway, I digress. As well as starting the new difficult-to-write-Ian McEwan-Richard Adams affair (longhand), I’ve also begun to write another book: what I think is a really strong concept for a sprawling—in that there are a minimum of about a dozen primary players—spec fic book (straight to screen).

I guess I wait to see what happens with RD before committing to one more than the other. In the meantime Aliya and I are writing another story together. Well, when she gets back from Wales.

nb That's not me limbo dancing by the way