Happy Book Birthday!

A combined April/May newsletter; The Lightborn - third and final volume of the trilogy - book birthday; comparisons between first drafts and published manuscripts.

Dear reader,

It’s been busy at my end, so I’m a bit late on the April newsletter. When I realised I was going to write it late enough that it ended up in May, I thought it was a good opportunity to make it coincide with The Lightborn’s release. So here we are! This month we’re talking trilogies, what they look like when they’re started, what it’s like to finish them - and the never-ending war of the writing life and work balance.

What’s happening with the book – The Lightborn’s Book Birthday!

The Lightborn is now out in hardback, and the full story of Tales of the Edge is out in full glory. If you have been waiting for the full story to be out before sinking your teeth into the first volume, no need to wait any longer!

This is a draft I started in September 2018, for a trilogy that I signed three years after I’d started writing it, and that’s now, six years down the line, finally out there in the world, in full. It feels both exhilarating and strange, to be done with a story I’ve lived with for so long.

You can order the book online, or ask your local bookshop. If you would like a signed copy, you can get one from the Goldsboro edition – I signed the tip-in pages in my new home, atop the boardgame my partner and I were still playing. It also has lovely sprayed edges to look glamorous on the bookshelf! The audiobook is out on May 16th, so you have a couple more days to wait if you want to hear Laura Hanna and Peter Kenny narrate it.

What’s happening on the page – From First Draft to Published Novel

How do you get from a first draft to a published trilogy? Having now published all three volumes of Tales of the Edge, I felt it was a good time to reflect on the manuscripts before they could even be called that, when they were messy first drafts hidden in word documents, not intended for anyone to see.

Today, let’s do something a bit different from usual: I will paste excerpts from the very first draft of The Collarbound, written in 2018, and compare it with the excerpts from the first volume as it was published in 2022. Four years and multiple edits separate both these versions, as well as invisible structural edits that covered the whole three books and the ways I wanted to tell this story. To avoid spoilers, I haven’t used anything from The Lightborn.

I’m hoping this might be interesting – and heartening! – to aspiring writers. I want to shed light on the writing process, which in my case consists of tons of editing, and I want to reassure young writers that it’s normal if the first draft looks ugly and clunky. It always will. The wonderful thing about writing is that you can always make it better. How to make it better, how to edit efficiently, is the most useful skill I was ever taught.

The following scene is taken from early in The Collarbound. Isha and Tatters have walked to the Temple and are having a chat, trying to prise each other’s secrets and discover each other’s past. They’re back from the shrine, after an intense back-and-forth of questions and answers, and Tatters has just wrapped his cloak around Isha’s shoulders after he noticed her shivering.

(2018)

‘Thanks,’ she said. She sounded surprised. Maybe she hadn’t wanted a dirty cloak which Tatters walked, ate and slept in. But she hugged the hems of it closer and blew on her hands.

‘I’ve got my last question,’ she said.

‘I thought we weren’t playing anymore.’

‘You got to ask three questions, I asked two. It’s only fair game if I get one more.’

He laughed. That was partly what he enjoyed about Rowena – the sheer cheek of her. ‘Very well. I’m listening.’

(2022)

‘Thanks.’ She sounded surprised. Maybe she hadn’t wanted a dirty cloak which Tatters walked, ate and slept in. But she tugged the hems closer and blew on her hands.

Isha stared at the mosaic before them. With the lights low on the horizon, the sun sinking over the Edge set the stones ablaze.

‘I’ll tell you why I came to the Nest,’ she said. This was a breach of the Unburdening’s rules. ‘But I have a question for you first.’ She was serious again, now she had stopped shivering.

He had to admit he was curious. ‘Very well. I’m listening.’

Obviously there are some punctuation changes. With regards to more major changes, I’ve rewritten a simple game where each character gets to ask a question in turn and turned it into a ritual called the Unburdening, that I’ve linked to the religion of the Edge. So in the final draft the text is much tighter, the dialogue is linked to the beliefs of my characters around letting go, and the conversations serves more than one purpose. It’s exploring characters’ backstories and doing character-development work (which it did before), but it’s now also doing worldbuilding.

You’ll notice the names have changed. Lots of names are stand-ins when I’m working on a piece. Characters are lucky if they don’t get tagged ‘XXX’ or ‘YYY’. Rowena would become Isha, Mae would become Lal, Anwen would become Arushi. Most names had to wait until I’d worked out the details of the Sunriser culture and the kher culture, and what language roots they each belonged to. The Sunrisers I based off Sanskrit, hence names like Isha and Lal, whereas the khers I based of a Tuareg dialect, hence Arushi, Yua, Uaza, etc.

In the final version, Isha’s characterization has shifted a bit as well, she’s still got spunk, but she’s a quiet, more fiercely focused young woman.

(2018)

‘Can I touch your collar?’

She glanced at him from behind her hands, still cupped in front of her mouth for warmth. For a moment, Tatters didn’t know what to say. No-one had ever asked that, or alluded to it, or attempted it. In many ways, his collar was the most intimate part of himself, although it was on display for everyone to see. Even he didn’t touch it. Oh, at the beginning he’d tried to tug it off often enough. Now that he knew he would never be able to remove it, he avoided it.

(2022)

Pious folk and priests milled around the Temple, but everyone kept their distance. She spoke with her hands still cupped in front of her mouth.

‘Can I touch your collar?’

For a moment, Tatters didn’t know what to say. No-one had ever asked that. His collar was intimate. Even he didn’t touch it. Oh, at the beginning he’d tried to tug it off often enough. Now that he knew he would never be able to remove it, he avoided it.

In the final version, I’ve condensed Tatters’ inner monologue a lot more. This often happens to me as I rewrite: I cut down and simplify. Writing myself into the story, I meander, spending too much time explaining what I mean, probably because I’m working it out. I can shed it later.

I’ve also added some sense of place, the priests milling around, the stones ablaze under the setting sun. This is to avoid my characters talking in the void, with no grounding or physicality.

(2018)

It was a strange request. Stranger still, he couldn’t see a good reason why to refuse it. It shouldn’t have any effect. As far as he knew, she wouldn’t be able to impact the collar in any way. It wasn’t such a shocking demand, it was just… odd. And oddly frightening.

Tatters didn’t want to be a slave to the collar. He didn’t want to dread it. Wasn’t it a slave’s mindset to be afraid of it still, now, after everything that had happened? He sensed Mae trying to intervene, but he shut her down. He wouldn’t let himself be intimidates by a piece of gold and giant’s magic.

Mae knew his answer before he spoke. She tried to force her way through his lips.

No no no no no no, said Mae.

‘Yes, I suppose so.’

(2022)

It was an odd request, and oddly frightening. Collars were one of the most powerful pieces of giant magic. It was difficult to know how it would react.

No, said Lal.

But I want to know why she came to the Nest.

No.

Why not?

I have a bad feeling about this, warned Lal.

But life was made of risks. Tatters cleared his throat:

‘All right. Tell me why you came to the Nest.’

I’ve changed the power-dynamics around here: Tatters listens to Lal a lot more, and he gives Isha a tougher time, forcing her to answer his questions first. I’ve swapped out Tatters’ long inner monologue, in narration, for a snappier dialogue inside his mind with Lal. It gives us a chance to hear more of Lal and is a more dynamic way to get the point across.

I’ve also made Tatters more cautious – he isn’t so sure Isha touching the collar won’t have an effect. This is probably because, as it does have a (drastic) consequence, I wanted him to be less naïve about his collar.

I find it interesting to see what I kept, nearly as much as what I cut: clearly, I liked the rhythm of ‘odd, and oddly frightening’ or the image of Isha speaking behind her cupped hands. It’s intriguing to me that, although I have the feeling the book has changed drastically, when I re-read a draft that’s four years older, I still find elements that have survived through all those edits and changes.

I hope this comparison was useful, and that it helps give people a sense of how the stories change as they are written and rewritten. The Tales of the Edge trilogy is the result of years of dreaming, yearning, writing, hoping, editing, and I hope you’ll enjoy the result.

What’s happening with me - New Beginnings

First things first, the most exciting thing to happen to me this month - only two days ago - was to get my author copies of The Lightborn. It’s very different to hold the book in hand, after it’s been a dream in my head for so long, or even just a digital picture of the copy on my computer. The books is lovely: it has the maps at the front, a quote describing Tatters and Passerine’s relationship on the back, a dramatic view of Passerine above the Edge.

I started a new job in March and, to be completely truthful, I’ve found balancing a full-time job with novel-writing hard. If it were just novel-writing I’d be fine, but it’s the related admin-y stuff that swamps me: signing up for panels for WorldCon, sifting through the hundreds of great ideas they’ve put out there; writing this newsletter; answering my editor, signing books and organising events.

I’ve always juggled multiple jobs at once, but often I was managing two or three (or more!) freelance or part-time jobs. Having to be in the office 9 to 5, without being able to follow my own schedule - I like working in more efficient, shorter bursts, then take mental breaks to walk the dog - means I then have trouble being efficient when I’m off the clock.

I was talking to a colleague, an animator, who said ‘the last thing I want to do on the weekends is animation.’ Here’s the thing: I do want to do writing on the weekend after doing mostly writing all week. It’s just finding the time and space to do so - especially since the Muse, I find, cannot be rushed. Sometimes she wants to sit and ponder, not count the minutes.

So the name of the game these next few months is going to be finding balance. I will continue this newsletter, but if writing monthly proves too challenging, I might send news less often - every other month, maybe. As I’m sure you can appreciate, dear reader, writing books has priority over writing newsletters, however fun that may be.

I have new stories bubbling away now that the trilogy is done, fresh places I want to go explore, untrodden paths my mind and feet want to discover. Now to find the way to get there!