By J.S. Watts
This is the post where I blog about my current work in progress. As someone who likes variety and multi-tasking, not surprisingly, I have multiple WIPs. There are the many individual poems I’m slowly proving and baking (metaphorically speaking, of course), along with the odd short story (with the emphasis on “odd”) and my next full poetry collection. Then there are, not one, but two novel manuscripts. The first of my WIP novels is called Old Light and is the sequel to my earlier paranormal novel Witchlight, beginning a year or less after the first novel finishes. Technically, the manuscript is finished and is sitting at the publishers awaiting both a final edit and a publication date (I’m hoping 2019, by the way), but as the editing process plays an important part in the way I craft my novels, I don’t consider a book fully baked until it’s actually published. The second WIP novel, Elderlight, is another tale of modern magic and a follow up to both Witchlight and Old Light, beginning roughly ten years after the beginning of the trilogy. It’s a genuine WIP as I’m still writing it. I was about one third of the way through the first draft of Elderlight when friends from France came to stay for a while. Obviously I had to prepare for their arrival, entertain them and drink some red wine with them whilst they were here, then wash linen and stuff once they left. After that I had a series of performances and readings to undertake, some workshops to promote and run, followed by some stuff to do, followed by yet more distracting stuff and the demands of the other, ongoing, WIPs. A couple of months on, I am still about one third of the way through the first draft of the book. Basically, I need to knuckle down and complete the novel soon. My principal task for the summer, therefore, is finishing the first draft of Elderlight. See you on the other side. J.S.Watts