I delivered a first draft of book 2 - now what?
How I've been keeping in the final stretch towards publication.
Let me begin with some transparency. I am sick and knackered. Yes, I’m already sick in the chronically unwell sense, but now I’m normal people plague sick (again), and feeling decidedly underqualified to be writing things like: ‘I got an agent and then a publishing deal and I’ve already written book two!’
Written down like this, in a succession of confident-sounding declaratives, I must seem very well put together: a miracle of productivity despite my health. So let me put it into perspective for you, sans thrills.
It took me three books to get my agent, just shy of 300,000 words written, two thirds of them languishing on my limping laptop.
While on submission to publishing houses, I received rejections from ‘The Big 5’ that stalled my self-belief and affected the pace and confidence with which I began book 2.
Writing this next book took me a whole year. 365 days, on and off, of pure grind. You know that feeling of your fingers gliding over the keyboard? Yeah, I don’t know her.
Book two was written in dribs and drabs, sometimes fervently, mostly with my jaw clenched and wrestling a feeling of silent terror that it was a waste of time.
Now that I have a publishing deal, I haven’t suddenly found much protected time to write - Wednesdays are meant to be my ‘writing day’ but they’re also my post-treatment recovery days, and recently, take my senior dog to therapy days because he keeps getting sick and it’s all very stressful.
When I sent the first draft to beta readers I didn’t feel confident that they would like it, let alone love it. This one is a different beast - sure it comes from a personal place still, but it’s way more ambitious and I still don’t know if I’m up for the job. I say this even having got to ‘The End’ and sent it to my agent.
Right now, I’m in limbo waiting to hear back from my wonderful and very busy agent. When the editor’s letter lands I know I will freak out at first - tiredness with bloom from my centre; I’ll become quite resistant, then eventually go for a walk, have stern words with myself and begin the arduous process of fixing the manuscript anyway.
All of this to say, there’s nothing sexy about writing book two, or writing at all really. It’s all hard work, but sometimes it’s joyful and when you press on, despite the world and its tragedies, despite your own smaller ones, you engage in a radical act of hope. I still believe this and will defend human made art against the apocalyptic arrival of AI written or edited books until my dying breath. So, look for me and you’ll find me butting my head against my laptop over choosing the easy way out because writing is medicine, it just doesn’t taste nice.
In other news: I am on the hunt for a good signing pen. Please drop any suggestions below, like this one recommended by the lovely people in my 2026 debut group.
Pre-order your copy of ‘A Healthy Appetite’ on the gorgeous new Dead Ink website here.
Screen Saver 🎬
What I’m Watching
‘Pluribus’ available to stream now on Apple TV
Look, it’s another apocalypse wrapped up in a shiny, less zombie-guts splatted bow!
Vince Gilligan, of Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul fame, has only gone and done it again. Except this time, instead of wickedly ‘attractive’ anti-heroes his next offering hands the mic to a cantankerous misanthrope - a queer bestseller whose world’s about to become stranger than the fiction she writes.
Rhea Seehorn give a flawless performance as Carol, one of a handful of immune people not struck down with a mysterious wave of smiley-faced happiness. While the world has quit its bickering, disarmed its warheads and stalled harming the planet and its creatures, Carol is reeling in the wake of a terrible loss and terrified of what the world has become.
For some, it looks like utopia, for others an alien attack on autonomy. What’s so brilliant about the series is the way it makes you question which is better: a world full of conflict but individuality, or one where we all function as ants in a colony, without violence or division.
Honestly, when I tuned in, I too was reeling in the wake of a reality-shifting loss. Like Carol, I felt suddenly isolated, alone in my grief - the kind of resistant to other people’s happiness than only comes with the implosion of your own reality. Maybe it’s because of this that I loved it so much. I enjoyed how well we get to know the small cast, how beautifully uncanny this realisation of the end of the world is. Above all, it hit that sweet spot of sci-fi treading a fine line, not overwhelming the very human story at the heart of the series.
And in case you’re interested in what I think - it’s humanity over robots ever time. Not that there are any robots here…
5 ☆☆☆☆☆
Current Reads 📚
Decomposition Book - With thanks to my publisher Dead Ink for the gifted proof.
Corpse love: about as unrequited as it gets.
I had a hell of a lot of fun reading Sara Mcclarinet’s debut, so much so, I ripped through it over one weekend. Early readers have been saying the same about A Healthy Appetite, and I used to think this might suggest they weren’t savouring the story, rather racing to the finish line to add another mark on their ‘2026 reads’ list. But it turns out, some books demand to be devoured in a single (for few) sittings, like a TV series that knows just how to leave you wanting more at the end each episode.
Mcclarinet’s novel is epistolary in style with an evenly weighted dual POV that races between a lost hiker and a lonely woman navigating a mental health crisis. It’s a propulsive, wickedly funny firecracker of a novel about obsession, love and what it’s like to wrangle a mind that makes it difficult to live in a human body.
I loved both Savannah and Ava in equal measure and found myself highlighting so many razor -sharp observations I could barely turn the page without grabbing my pen.