Weekly Blog - Monday 14th July

[Steven Hague]

I spent most of last week working on the third novel in the Zac Hunter series, provisionally entitled ‘The Beholder.’ On Monday, the planets moved into alignment and the writing came easy, and by the end of the day I’d added almost 2,000 words to the novel. Sadly, this was not how the rest of the week panned out. Trying to be creative on Tuesday through Friday was like wading through thick mud. When this sort of thing happens (and believe me it does, usually for no apparent reason) all you can do is chain yourself to the P.C. and keep slogging away. The one thing you shouldn’t do is quit and tell yourself that you’ll get back to it once inspiration returns – nothing gets written while you’re on a break.

When inspiration does strike, you need to be ready to take advantage of it. I’ve had some days where I’ve spent ages re-writing the same paragraph over and over, and then all of a sudden something’s clicked and I’ve written two pages in half an hour – had I not still been at the P.C. those two pages would never have seen the light of day. Perseverance is the name of the game.

Next week, my publisher, MIRA, has asked me to work on the Art Fact Sheet (AFS) for ‘Blood Law’, the follow up to my soon to be released debut novel ‘Justice For All.’ The AFS is a questionnaire that the publisher uses to help plan the cover art for the novel. Questions cover such topics as themes of the novel, major characters, major locations, etc. I’m also going to lunch in one of John Torode’s (one of the hosts on BBC’s Masterchef) restaurants in London on Tuesday. Two other MIRA crime authors will be present, Paul Johnson and E.V. Seymour, along with a select bunch of journalists. The lunch has been arranged to help the three of us garner some publicity ahead of the Harrogate Crime Writing Festival, at which we will all be appearing. Harrogate runs from Friday 18th to Sunday 20th July, and there’ll be a full report on how things go at the Festival in nest week’s blog.

Cheers,
Steve