So now we know that I’m not going to get a contract for another urbany thrillery hard-to-classify type book, at least, not yet, what the hell, I hear you cry, are you going to do? Your publisher seems to still like you, but you’ve got to come up with something, right?

Why yes, mysterious stranger, I do, and thank you for asking. “Go forth and write horror!” my agent said. “You’d be brilliant at that.” And so I duly carved together a full blown by-the-chapter outline and sent it to him, only to find out that it was too confusing and complex (and also possibly not horrible enough). Thankfully it seems I just tried to combine two stories in one, and last week I finished extricating and outlining the first of those to send back to him. The second will follow in due course, and then he can take his pick. The aim is to have that novel done by the end of August.

At the same time, I want to try to hedge my bets somewhat. I have a surplus of ideas (thanks, in part, to the pitching round when I found out Headline couldn’t go for another LEVELS-type book) and a shortage of time, a shortage that’s only going to get worse as the year goes on. So to make the most of the first while dealing with the second, I’m intending to run off a sideline in novellas at a wildly optimistic rate of one every two months (which means that by September, I’ll have three done). As much as I hate a bandwagon, these will go out via Amazon and on direct sale here. They’re likely to vary quite a bit in terms of content and even (to an extent) genre, and I confidently expect that they’ll sell well into the single or maybe - maybe - double digit numbers each. (I obviously hope for more, but I’m no salesman.)

Hopefully this’ll give me more fingers in more pies, as it were, and keep my income options flexible. And while I know I could in theory write another novel instead of three novellas, that doesn’t address the idea surplus. And for side projects, a shorter form feels better; not such a mountain to climb each time.

And then, come January, barring weird changes in dead tree sales meaning a regular pub deal for it has been resurrected, the currently near-finished MURDER PARK will come out in its own e-dition.

Busy year.