PD Martin's Blog

January 10, 2010

Trials and tribulations

Filed under: Coming Home ebook — Tags: , , , , , , — PD Martin @ 10:25 pm

This week’s blog is a little late – but the timing ties in nicely with the work I’ve been doing this week on Chapter 4 of Coming Home. I’ve just finished it!

As you probably know, Coming Home is book 6 in the Sophie series, and I’m writing it online as an interactive ebook.

I’ve made some changes to the format of Coming Home recently:

  1. I now post each chapter online on Monday morning (Aussie time), along with the questions for the next chapter.
  2. At the end of the 12 weeks I’ll edit the book in its entirety and re-launch it as a free ebook. There could be major edits, major changes!
  3. Given I’m posting each chapter online now, I don’t think I’ll be running my weekly ‘sneak peek’ competitions anymore. They seem a little redundant…what do you think? Write a comment below this post or email me if you have any suggestions.

The new procedure of posting the book chapter-by-chapter has some challenges for me. Already this week I can see edits and changes I’ll need to make. For example, I’ve drafted Chapter 4 with Sophie looking at the most recent victim’s skeletal remains. But I think I may end up having to make the body ‘fresher’ to fit in with other elements of the case and give the detectives and Sophie. What this means is that when you read Chapter 4 this week Sophie’s looking at a skeleton of a boy who was killed six months ago, but when I release the final book this may change!

My other challenge at the moment is that I’m away at the beach, spending 90% of my time on holiday with my husband and three-year-old daughter and 10% of my time writing. I also don’t have Internet down here (except for an hour or two in the local library a few times a week), which means I don’t have access to my usual research materials – being able to email a forensic pathologist while I’m writing and getting an answer back within a few hours or a day, looking up my extensive book collection or spending an hour or two searching for body decomposition states after 6 months in bushland (and whether six months’ decomp is more forensic pathologist or anthropologist). Just your average crime author research!

This may mean even more edits in a few weeks’ time when I’m back into my normal routine.

Aside from that, I’m really enjoying writing Coming Home and being in Sophie’s head again.

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