Getting Serious About Writing - or not...

This week saw the release of the first Joe Hawke action-adventure thriller, The Vault of Poseidon, and this was a very exciting time, even though I am now almost finished with the second Joe Hawke novel and beginning to iron out the plot of the third one.

Between all this writing and managing the "post-production" process, it's fair to say there isn't a lot of time left over for much else. In fact it's worth saying that anyone starting out on a similar journey shouldn't underestimate just how much time will be needed to manage your writing after you've typed "The End".

The reason I came to the blog today was because as I launched Poseidon and watched her sail out of the dock and into the digital ocean, I wondered if I should have put some kind of disclaimer in the front of it, just a short note telling people not to take the story too seriously.

My writing is not confined to the inimitable Joe Hawke (or as inimitable as a hero in an action-adventure genre can get anyway...) and I have several other characters and stories that I would like to write about. Some of these (horror of horrors) are more "serious" than others, but the Joe Hawke books are just my attempt at producing pure escapist fun. They are my way of saying "it's actually okay not to be really serious all the time" and you can just relax into some old-school Bond escapism here if you want to do that.

So in the end I decided I had made the right decision not to explain all that somewhere in the story, and instead I'll throw it into the blog and now get back to finishing Hawke 2.

The Vault of Poseidon and Other Matters...

With the release of The Vault of Poseidon looming on the horizon, I have been asked some questions on Twitter about the novel, so I'll answer those here and say something general about the books I write and explain why I write them.

I wrote my first fictional story when I was eight or nine, and I've enjoyed writing ever since. I have written all kinds of stories, from whodunnits to historical to fantasy to scifi, but my favourite kind is the thriller. For me, writing is an opportunity to get away from the real world, and I hope that as a reader you are able to join me in what is nothing more than honest, pure escapist fun... or so I hope.

I write a lot, but like so many other creative pursuits, writing a novel takes a lot of time. First there's the idea, then the plan, then the research, then the plotting, then the first draft, then the second, third... however many other drafts, and then there's the editing, proof-reading, finding a simple mistake that changes the entire story... so many pixels, so little time.

So if you want some honest, fun escapism then I hope you'll join me as we get away from our lives together and go into these stories which I write to entertain myself, and hopefully you, too.

As of right now, I am aiming for a release date in May 2015 for The Vault of Poseidon, and it should be available for Pre-Order from Amazon in April. I will release more details about the novel in the next few weeks, but in the meantime, it's back to the grindstone for me...