Mousebeard

I thought I'd write an update about my book, The Mousehunter... which was once called Mousebeard. (I use Mousebeard in the title to this post as I want to try and reclaim the term in Google search! I came up with it first, I swear!) It's not out for another year yet, but there's always stuff going on.

I've been hard at work on the illustrations, and also typing away at the sequel on my weekly days off. It's a strange feeling embarking on the second story. It feels very much like I'm writing my first book again, albeit with a lot more experience and a much greater understanding of the characters. They speak more fluently, and act as I want them too now. The ideas for this one are also well over a year old in the planning, so they're much less 'jumping out of nowhere and hitting the page' than they were in the first one.

I'm really enjoying working out the plot in detail, and adding twists and character growth and the like. It's peculiarly a bit like gardening and running a veg plot, in that you plant things, wait a while for the elements to kill them or let them grow, and then in a few months see what you have. Everything changes, lots of things die, and things that you thought would do badly often become the most successful parts of the whole process.