With less than a month until the publication of
Written in Scars, I thought it would be nice to write a little about the
genesis of the book. Obviously, this is all spoiler free.
First up, I’ll admit that the title itself is an
absolute steal from one of my favourite singers Jack Savoretti. He released an
album of that name in 2015 and I absolutely love it. Jack’s an English
singer/song-writer with the most incredible voice. If you’re not already
familiar with him then check him out.
This was always going to be a novella. I finished work
on the final book in The Anthem Trilogy last
December. The trilogy took over two years of intense work and before I got
stuck into another big project, I wanted to write something shorter. Looking
over my notebooks I see I tried out a lot of different ideas before settling on
an idea of two married men meeting, falling in love and having to overcome some
huge obstacles. As I developed the characters, that idea changed slightly. Only
one of the men is married when they meet, the other is already divorced.
I almost always start a story with characters: getting
to know them, building their backstories and this was no different. I wrote ten-page
biographies for the two main characters, Logan and Sam. Most of that never made
it into the finished story, but it’s important stuff. I need to know these guys
inside and out before I can write them. Where they come from, where they live,
the kinds of things they like enjoy or dislike: it’s all nessecary to telling
their story.
I always use photographs as a physical reference for
the characters. I feel a bit like a director casting a film: getting the right
actor for the part. This is how I pictured Logan and Sam while writing them.
Sam
Logan
Pretty hot, eh? It’s easy to fall in love with men who
look like that and this was no exception. I love these two characters and with
everything in place I found them easy to write for. I plotted the story in
advance as I always do and looking back through my notes, that didn’t really
change as I wrote it. The finished book sticks pretty closely to the original
outline. I guess that’s because it’s short. It took a month to write the first
draft. It takes me about six to nine months to write the first draft of a
novel, so things are much more likely to change in that time.
And that’s a much as I can reveal ahead of release.
The book is available to pre order right now and I’m
delighted to see it’s already picked up a 5 star advance review from Gay Book
Reviews. Check it out:
PRE ORDER WRITTEN IN SCARS
