I wrote Ribbonworld, the first part of the Balcom series, way back in 2014. It was never meant to be more than a stand-alone story about corruption and corporate misdeeds, set on a hostile planet at some time in the far future. Balcom Industrial was a company that had used its power to abuse and control, a good enterprise that had gone bad. In Ribbonworld, Miles Goram, a disgraced ex-journalist, set about changing things for the better. It became a chance for him to exorcise his own demons.
‘Review a hotel for me,’ she said. ‘It’ll be easy,’ she said. I haven’t even got started and there’s a body in the bathroom.
When I had finished it, I could visualise more adventures in the same universe. I realised that I would have to write a sequel. Jungle Green was the result. This story, which had the same major characters and recurring themes, dealt with counterfeit drugs. It was written in 2016 and published the year after.
One tablet a day, it’s supposed to keep you alive. But it might just kill you.
I always intended to write a third part to attempt to tie all the loose ends together. Whether it would be the final part of the story was out of my control, that all depended on the voices in my head.
Then I realised that I needed a magnet, a thing to draw a prospective reader into my worlds. So I wrote a prequel to the series, using the backstory I’d developed. It ended where Ribbonworld began and filled in a lot of the details only hinted at in the other two books. But not all of them.
The Lost Princess was the result, it’s free, in return for your email address. You also get a subscription to my newsletter, with more freebies and offers as well as the lowdown on what I’m up to.
The most famous woman in the Galaxy, heiress to the Balcom empire, has vanished.
Has she simply exchanged her celebrity life for peace and quiet or has the unthinkable happened?
I digress, now it’s time to write the next (last?) part, and, as it’s nearly seven years since I wrote Ribbonworld (and where did they go?), I’m a little rusty on the details.
To catch up, I’ve re-read the first three novels, just to remind myself about all the crucial bits, the places where the plot of the unwritten one will need to match up to what’s already happened or been mentioned. And who is still alive, I’d hate to have that sort of plot hole to fill in a second edit.
I have the motivation for what will be called The Circle has no End. Ideas are starting to fill my head, I can begin to see it playing on the screen located just behind my eyes. Once I get a clear sighting of it, I can start to copy it down. My cover designer has come up with a concept that tells a bit of the story, this is the first time anyone has seen it.
When Layla Balcom was young, all she wanted was to be anonymous, not the daughter of the richest man in the Galaxy. She came up with a plan. Many years later, has it come back to haunt her?
And there’s one thing that had become very clear to me. There are no traps in what I have already written. Considering that I never intended to write more adventures for the characters in Ribbonworld, you might expect me to have problems developing the plot and getting the sequence of events that are justified by the backstory, which I can’t change.
I needn’t have worried. In fact, the more I looked at what had already been written, the more I realised that I had left myself wriggle room, ambiguity and open doors to write the story that I want. There is no need for convoluted explanations or justification, it all fits.
I suppose that when you understand the way I work, only ever writing what I’ve been told, then it makes sense. Whoever has been dictating the story so far knew that one day, they would be telling me the rest.
It’s their story, after all.
I’d love to get your comments, please leave them below. While you’re here, why not take a look around? There are some freebies and lots more content, about me, my writing and everything else that I do. You can join my newsletter for a free novella and more news by clicking this link.
All my publications can be found on my Amazon page,
I’d love to get your comments, please leave them below. While you’re here, why not take a look around? There are some freebies and lots more content, about me, my writing and everything else that I do. You can join my newsletter for a free novella and more news by clicking this link.
