Whenever I write a novel I usually go through a phase of being concerned that it’s not as good as those that have gone before it. This phase often begins in the conception of the novel and carries on through the plotting and research to the actual writing itself. I think that this stems from the fact that I’m not comparing like with like. Previous novels, by their very nature, are complete, whereas the current one is always a work in progress. As I write it, flaws become apparent, and by the… Continue

In the course of the last week I finished my first read through of The Beholder. This initial edit was all about cutting out any extraneous verbiage, and it resulted in the total word count falling from 106,000 to 96,000. For the most part, the stuff that got the chop was either odd words or sentences that simply weren’t needed, as they over described either the setting or the action.



I then moved on to stage two, which was to work through the assorted notes and comments I made… Continue

Death Of A Thousand Cuts

Last week saw the start of the editing process for The Beholder. Having completed the first draft of a novel, the first thing I do is to give it a read through to tidy up the prose, which generally involves making lots of small cuts. My first drafts tend to be a little on the flabby side, as it’s fair to say that I have a natural tendency towards verbosity, but I also think that there’s a sub-conscious factor at work, namely that when I set out to write a… Continue

On the publicity front, an abridged version of the interview that I had with the Bookfiends Kingdom (www.bfkbooks.com) is now up on the publicity section of my website. Please visit www.stevenhague.com here to read it.



But on to more important matters – namely the promise I made to have finished the first draft of The Beholder by the time I write this blog. Good news folks – I’m a man of my word! It finally came in at a meaty 105,000 words, which is the longest first draft of the… Continue