In the Shadow of London - third draft

Hello!

Just a short update for you today.

I'm still working away as always. I have two current focuses - a new novel that is currently up to 64,000 words and is kind of in the final act I suppose (my natural length seems to be about 90,000 words for a first draft). I have a couple of working titles but I don't like either of them so I won't post them here. This book is aimed at younger readers (as in, no bad language or ultra violence like most of my books), and is a bit of a departure for me. I kind of wanted to write something similar to Harry Potter but still different, so that's what this is. And it's pretty good. You (and hopefully your children) will like it. The first draft should be done by the end of this month, after which I'll probably forget about it for a while or start planning a second book.

And the other focus is of course The Tube Riders: In the Shadow of London. I've finished my first read through and now I'm fine tuning - a little more than I'd like, but I want it to be really realistic and detailed, as well as fast paced. Because this book is set entirely in London in the period between Exile and Revenge, I'm taking great care with my locations to get them as accurate as possible. As always I've taken a few liberties and made up a couple of train stations, but there a lot more real locations in this book. Google Streetview is proving especially useful. In an ideal world I'd like to up-camp to London for a couple of months and just wander about, but unfortunately I don't have that liberty. Perhaps for the fifth(!) book ...!

Okay, back to it, that's all for now. Thanks as always for reading. Make sure you sign up for the Mailling List (all the red buttons on the main site) to get exclusive news and offers before anyone else.

Chris Ward
March 11th 2016