This might surprise some of you (sadden, even...? :-) ) but I've aborted my first attempt at the Tube Riders prequel, The Rise of the Governor, and start more or less over.
Why?, I hear you screaming in your millions ....
Basically, while I was writing the story I wanted to write, I wasn't writing it in the way I wanted to write it. I had decided to get all arty, with a weird title, strange flashbacks, and a gradual build up of emotional turmoil, but I had an epiphany a couple of days ago and realised I wasn't writing a Tube Riders book.
And since the whole point of writing a Tube Riders prequel is to write a Tube Riders book, then I need to ditch the art project and write that instead.
Yes, so most of the characters will be different, but this is the entire history of why Mega Britain is Mega Britain and because only Tube Riders fans care about that I have to write a book for them - for YOU - not for me.
Of course, there will be some crossover, haha. I don't think I could do anything else. But all the elements that made Tube Riders awesome will be in there, in place of all the internal dialogues and emotional turmoil that was starting to take over the manuscript.
It's not all bad news. No words are every wasted and while many of the 30,000 I've written so far won't make it into the final book, I feel like I've been hanging out with the characters a while and I know them a lot better. It's always easier to write a book when you know your setting. And there's lots of kick ass stuff that will move over to the new version - crashed spaceships and gulags and mutant killer hounds and crazy Russian superhumans - I'll just be setting it out in a slightly different way.
Onwards and upwards. I'll keep you posted on progress.
Chris Ward
March 16th 2014
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