This was not what I planned

Once I had finished NaNoWriMo this year, I planned to get on with one of the half-finished novels that I had lurking, in my mind and on my hard drive. The voices in my head have other ideas.

I wanted to catch up with the adventures of Andorra Pett, find out what Horis Strongman and Jackson Thwaite were up to, or reach the end of Layla Balcom’s journey. And not just them, there are several other scenarios to explore. I have made promises, told readers that I’m writing the next instalment of whatever.

I am acutely aware that it’s important to keep people happy. Especially the people who buy my work. It’s just a pity that the voices in my head don’t share my enthusiasm, and don’t actually give me any glimpses of the stories that I want to work on.

After I sent the draft of We are Saul off to my editor, I was quietly confident that I would carry on with Andorra Pett and the Luna Mining Conspiracy.

Instead, I’m revisiting an idea that I had about a time travel caper, tentatively titled The Perfect Crime. It’s come into my head and I can’t shake it off, the only solution is to write it down.

To be clear, I don’t like writing about time travel. It’s far too complicated trying to get everything to fit perfectly. I wrote a blog post about it ages ago, where I discussed the problems that the subject causes writers.

Time Travel.

Since that post, I’ve written another time travel short story, that makes three. One is in the anthology 1066 Turned Upside Down, where I deal with the effect that a time traveller might have on the Battle of Hastings.

The others, It Works Both Ways and Passing Thru are featured in my Flash Fiction collections and talk about the grandfather paradox and changing the present (or future) by altering the past.

Now, it appears that I may be attempting another one, which has the potential to be a full novel. That’s if I can stand the continual checking and reworking of the plot which will be required to make it a success. As I’ve said before, this is the only time? when you really need to see the end of the story, so that you can work back to get a beginning that will lead to it.

The actual idea behind the story (without giving too much away) is that time travel could be used to make crime pay, provided that you were careful. I love the idea, so it’s worth spending a bit of time seeing if all the pieces come together.

It looks like Andorra Pett and all the others might just have to wait for a while.

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