Category: Willoughby the Narrator

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Book 7 is with my editor

I finished editing Willoughby the Narrator a few weeks ago, and rested for a little before checking it again and then sending it to my editor.  I’m on tenterhooks, because Willoughby was her guinea pig, and sadly passed away very suddenly while I was writing the first part of the book.  When I got to the end of that part I had to wait a while before I got on with the rest of it, but as you know, I finished it in July.

I’ve also done the first major edit for The Princelings of the North, book 8.  There is a bit of crossover business with book 7, and after toing and froing for a bit, I realised my planned fix in book 8 wouldn’t work, and I’d have to edit something that is said in book 7.  But at least I can do that now, before it’s out in the big wide world.

The cover for Willoughby is coming along well, too.  I imagine I might be able to do a cover reveal in late October or November, but I don’t want to do it a long time before I get the edited version back.  I know there’ll be a lot of things I have to work on once my editor has wielded her purple pen!

Ah – and now I remember I do pencil sketches for Chapter Illustrations for the Princleings books.  That could hold things up!

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Writing more Princelings books

jemima at camp nano

I’m at Camp NaNoWriMo at present, working on the last two books of the Princelings series.

Except that it seems to have become the last four books.

The plan was to write the Chronicles of Willoughby the Narrator, and outline Princelings Revolution.  But I have interviews with Fred and George, and also Willoughby, on my blog in July, and I realise that some stories that I’ve done in the past won’t be in either of these books.  I may revert to an earlier plan, and collect them together for the Chronicles of Marsh (or Castle Marsh), calling Willoughby’s book simply Willoughby the Narrator, which it’ll probably be called for short anyway.  But there is a big gap between where Willoughby will now end, and where Revolution should start… and the gap would be filled with another earlier thought, The Princelings of the North. You remember Dylan and Dougall, who had their own stories in the BookElves Anthologies?  Well, they also had a short story in 2013 when I did an A to Z of short stories. I expect them to play a part in the revolution, but a lot is scheduled to happen in 2016-17 in the Realms, well before the last book is scheduled to start.  So I think they’ll have an adventure of their own within the series, probably before Chronicles is released, and then I’ll finish with Princelings Revolution as planned.

I realised all this as I started Camp Nano.  The first thing I did, despite some prep work in June to bring the timeline up to date and review where I’d got to with Willoughby, was to open a new file called ‘A Short History of the Realms’.  That forms the basis of all the rest of the stories, and I decided the easiest way was for me to do a summary of the whole thing, then pull the books together from that.  Maybe the Short History will eventually come out as an extra 🙂

So, don’t forget to catch up on the later books if you don’t already have them – there’s a Smashwords promotion on through July – and watch for more news in August.

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Plans for 2016

This time last year I suddenly started writing book 7.  It wasn’t really scheduled, in fact I knew what I really ought to be doing was editing the first in my other series.  But the story had come to me, and needed to be written – at least enough to get the idea down on paper.  Okay, in my computer.  The strange things was that the Willoughby the character is based on passed away suddenly (and shockingly) while I was writing it.  I’d woken up with this urgent need to get on with it, then afternoon came, and news from New York that the guinea pig had gone.  I carried on writing his story for the rest of the month, until I got to the point where I needed to stop and plan.

Most of the rest of 2015, I was busy with other projects but thinking of Willoughby’s story.  I realised that I really have to write the final book in the series as well to make sure it all comes together.  I make notes every now and then.  I spot things I want to include.  Characters drop in and leave again.  I drop teasers onto this website for you.  I was too busy to get on with the book.

But once I’ve published the Perihelix, I’ll be back to writing the Chronicles of Willoughby the Narrator – and drafting the final book in the series, provisionally called Princelings Revolution.  At one time I had a book in mind called the Chronicles of Castle Marsh, but it turned into Willoughby’s book in order to have a proper protagonist adventure/mystery – which is what the others are, really.  Together the two final books should do what I was thinking of for The Chronicles of Castle Marsh.

The big question is… how can Fred and George make good on their promise to Hugo at the end of Book 1?

Watch this space!