The transition between querying one novel and drafting the next is one of the strangest parts of the writing process. One story is leaving your hands just as another is demanding your attention.
Over the past few months, I've been immersed in revisions of Our Crooked Houses, reworking the novel's structure, deepening character arcs and strengthening the threads that sit beneath the central mystery. What began as a political thriller evolved into something more layered: a story about loyalty, identity, and the competing versions of truth we create for ourselves and others.
There comes a point in every manuscript where more tinkering is no longer productive. After many drafts, countless spreadsheets, wall charts, and conversations with wonderfully generous beta readers, I've reached that point with Our Crooked Houses. The manuscript is now out in the world and being queried with agents. Querying is an exercise in patience, optimism and occasionally resisting the urge to refresh your inbox every other minute. It's exciting, nerve-racking and entirely beyond my control. Which, as it turns out, is an excellent reason to start writing something new.
This month I'm taking part in the November 50K challenge, turning my attention to a new project: The Saltwater Inn.
Very different from Our Crooked Houses in setting, it explores many of the themes I'm continually drawn back to as a writer: loyalty, belonging, family, community and the stories people tell to protect themselves. Set in a small coastal town, it leans into mystery, hidden histories and the complicated relationships between people and place.
At this stage, the novel exists as a collection of notebooks, scene fragments, photographs, research rabbit holes and a growing cast of characters who are gradually revealing themselves. That's one of my favourite parts of beginning a new manuscript. Everything feels possible. The story hasn't yet become constrained by what it is. It's still full of questions.
Alongside drafting, I've also been reading widely, studying the work of authors whose novels blend suspense, atmosphere and emotional depth, and thinking a lot about what draws me back to crime and mystery fiction. Increasingly, I find myself interested not simply in what happened, but why people choose certain narratives, what communities choose to remember, and what they're determined to forget.
In the meantime, it's back to the notebook, the word count tracker and a large supply of coffee.
Here's to new stories, uncertain beginnings and seeing where the next 50,000 words lead.