In Your Own Words – T E Shepherd

A tale about publishing and publishers

Thomas — Thu, 30 Oct 2014 21:24:57 +0000

Peter met the stares of his friends with a grin. ‘How many books are published each year? How many books have ever been published? There’s no such thing as an original story – just an original way of telling the story.’

3788 / 80000 words. 5% done!

Oxwater: the Oxford you know so well like you’ve never seen it before

Thomas — Wed, 22 Oct 2014 21:57:15 +0000

You probably can’t guess how how much fun I’m having with my new story. Peter is turning out to be something of an anti-hero, I think, as I wait for Lucy to make an appearance again. Already there are a some slight, knowing (and therefore unrelated but just nice) references to Mr Tumnal – all my novels are linked in some way however obscurely even across different worlds.

And In Your Own Words is set in a very different world, where I can describe Oxford just as I know and love it but where it exists on the water like in Venice. It’s fun imagining the great St Giles Lake at the centre of the city, and coming up with names for streets that are now canals…

3449 / 80000 words. 4% done!

Writing Wednesdays

Thomas — Wed, 15 Oct 2014 21:52:12 +0000

So tonight sees me finding the first of a regular series of evenings which I can devote squarely to my writing. Thursdays have been, for the last 14 years(!!) band night, and since I’ve been with Emma Thursday’s have thus been Emma-time. Tonight Emma went off into Oxford after an early dinner to go to a taster session of Rock Choir.

Having never been to a choir before, it seems to have been a success for her, and so it seems that I will be getting an equivalent evening of Thomas-time to devote to writing my next novel, In Your Own Words (working title). My first novel, all in all, took about 9 years to be finished, and Mr Tumnal, five… I’m determined that my third novel will be nowhere near that. Tonight, I’m heading on the way with another 700 words in the bag.

2669 / 80000 words. 3% done!

Back On The Words

Thomas — Fri, 10 Oct 2014 20:47:41 +0000

There is something quite special about being back in the writing zone. I’ve missed it. On the 27 July 2013 I finished my last novel, and since then I’ve been keeping my creativity going with editing Mr Tumnal, along with tinkering with ideas for a follow-up Norse mythology novel to The End Of All Worlds, and writing a couple of short stories. However I have missed the urgency to write that you get when there is a novel is burning inside of you.

This week I’ve finally found my novel voice again, working out how to tell the story that I first came up with about eight years ago when I went to the pub after work with Ros and her friends about a guy who has his novel stolen along with his laptop only to read it in the slush pile of unsolicited manuscripts submitted to him year’s later.

Oh, and Puck features in this novel too! Not sure if he’s working for Oberon or Titania this time, or neither this time!

1934 / 80000 words. 2% done!