Monday, March 8, 2010

Done!

Finished the first draft of Midnight, the new Jack Nightingale book. 108,546 words. I reckon it's great but then I always do when I've finished a book. I'm sending it to my agent today and he and I and a terrific writer he has at the agency (coincidentally called Peta Nightingale!) will work on it over the next few weeks. With the Dan Shepherd books I tend to do very little editing but the Nightingale series is very different and is much more of a collaborative process. Midnight won't be on the shelves until early next year so there's plenty of time!

There won't be any great celebration because there will be several drafts to come, followed by the publisher's edits followed by typesetting. Plus I now have to dive straight into the new Dan Shepherd book, based around Somalian pirates and an al-Qaeda plot to bring a dirty bomb into the UK. Lovely.....

5 comments:

stuart said...

You make it sound like you're ripping into the new book with barely a pause between the last one?? You don't need to take a bit of time out to find your headspace first?

Stephen Leather said...

Hi Stuart - sadly no, I'm trying to do two books a year, one Dan Shepherd and one Jack Nightingale, so I'm working flat out!

Marry, thanks, I just post what's on my mind!

John Potter said...

This is really interesting. With a new spider book imminent does that mean you are writing two books a year? I see Lee Child is doing the same this year as well?

Is this something you have chosen to do or the publisher trying to squeeze extra books out of a known revenue stream, being you.

After your post the other day about superstores ordering 27,000 copies, noticed Tesco's had your book featured on display. I do like the larger format layout, hardback sized in paperback.

I also read somewhere Nightingale is only going to be a trilogy?

Stephen Leather said...

Hey, just realised that Marry's comment is probably spam! Clever. Think I'll leave it up as it's so clever...

Hey John. Yeah, two books a year. It's not as hard as it sounds because I've usually got something else on the go (Private Dancer, Confessions Of A Bangkok Private Eye etc). I wanted to do it because I feel I have so many books that I want to write.

The NIghtingale story will take three books but I think I will then be able to use him as an ongoing character in more books.... but I think the third Nightingale book will explain a lot of what happened in the first book, especially with regards to Ainsley Gosling.

Karen said...

WoW, Ive just finished Nightfall. It was GREAT. Thanks for writing it. Any idea when Midnight will be released as I cant wait for the next instalment. Please let it be soon (ie this year). Keep up the great writing Stephen.....