Plausible Plans, or What Might be Going On

I have no idea what I’m going to do next. Absolutely none. I haven’t got a Scooby – zero, nada, zilch. I wish that this was more of a surprise to me. And any time that I risk talking about plans, something dreadful usually happens, so I normally don’t bother. But the last month has been so chaotic, I thought I’d share what happened, what’s happening, and what’s likely to happen. But no promises and this isn’t a legally binding document.

It started off when someone made the very reasonable request that all of the White Hart stuff should be in one place. After all, I’ve been writing the stuff for well over a decade and bits have appeared on roughly three blogs, Amazon, Royal Road, and now Amazon again. Not to mention that when the request was made, not all stories were in the same place. I decided to put them all together in one wonderful collection.

I put them all together, and the word count came up as over 260,000 words. It was on the very edge of what places like Amazon would accept to publish on account of size. At that point I tried using the dratted grammar editor on Microsoft Word and it all went wrong and I was landed with what looked like 6,000 commas that needed to be carefully checked. At this point I said a lot of rude words and indulged in strong drink.

I decided that I would do the sensible thing and split it into books. There would be Tales from the White Hart, More Tales from the White Hart, and Further Tales from the White Hart, which had already been on Amazon, together with two more books, Back to the White Hart and Stories from the White Hart, which were the collected ongoing short stories and stray bits that have been kicking around my blog. The stories may not all be in the same place, but at least they’d be available and could all be accessed in sequence. So far, I was feeling sensible. This is always a bad sign.

I tried publishing Tales from the White Hart on Amazon. I’d checked all the commas, gone through and corrected errors, and I tidied up the writing. It took a fortnight for me to get the dratted manuscript into a dratted format that dratted Amazon would accept. There was a lot of harsh language and more strong drink than was good for me, but I eventually got the darned thing out there with a cute new cover from GetCovers who are awesome.

I then polished up More Tales from the White Hart and that went through the whole process with very little bother. I felt confident going into Further Tales from the White Hart, got the cover made, the content checked and out it went into the Amazonian ether. Then it all went wrong again. The ebook was fine, but Amazon rejected the cover for the paperback. Apparently there wasn’t enough room on the spine to show the title and author clearly. They needed me to fix it.

This shouldn’t have been a surprise. There were a lot fewer chapters in Further Tales from the White Hart which was around 70% as long as Tales from the White Hart and More Tales from the White Hart. I couldn’t change the dimensions of the book to make it easier, because it had already been published and Amazon wouldn’t let me change the height and width of the book. Despite the setback, I believed that I could still make it work. There are so many ways that I can do this. I could fiddle around with the ebook cover, remove any text on the spine, put it with the Stories collection – a whole load of options.

I checked with the content I’d allocated to Back at the White Hart and Stories from the White Hart and they were also looking on the thin side. What was worse, a lot of the stories from Back at the White Hart had been written with a 500 word limit in mind and, in terms of chapter length, were desperately skinny.

I just wanted the White Hart collection out of the way as I’ve got a fun series with lots of werewolves in mind and I want to get cracking on it. I can’t even think of touching it until I get this dratted stuff sorted out. So I made the obvious, sensible, logical decision.

I’m planning to splitting the chapters from Stories from the White Hart among a few other places, including Further Tales from the White Hart, Back at the White Hart and some potential new stories. I’m also writing around 30,000 words of new content for Further Tales from the White Hart so that I can get a decent paperback from it, and I’ve unpublished the ebook until I can sort it out properly. Back at the White Hart is likely to be rewritten and expanded, though still following the same story. And there are two potential novels on the sidelines that are suggested by what’s left of the Stories and a few ideas that I’ve had kicking around.

Meanwhile I also want to write further chapters of The Guest, add some articles, prepare for a crazy idea I’ve had for October that involves a lot of writing, and share a few reviews. I’ve got a load of other stuff to finish before I get to the fun werewolves and I really want to get to the fun werewolves!

And, as I’ve said, every other time I’ve laid out plans online, it’s all gone horribly wrong. But here’s what I hope will happen, with luck and a following wind. If all goes well, Further Tales from the White Hart and Back at the White Hart should be finished by the end of June, the free floating stories allocated, and there should be an idea of any other potential books. But while in theory there’s going to be a lot of White Hart stuff coming out over the next few months, I’m not ruling out unexpected werewolves.

In the meantime, here’s a link to Do Werewolves Eat Dog Biscuits for a brief taste of werewolf fun, and please let me know if  you have any opinions on the matter. I’ll be grateful for any voices of reason that I can get.

*I did some notes, chased down a few old pieces, checked back to lists in my binder and there is significantly more to do than just the two stories, but I’m not sure how it will shake out. Watch this space!