With the first book solidly behind us now, writing for the second book is well underway. To begin with it was pretty strange getting back into the writing flow of things—turning off that editors brain feels impossible sometimes—but over the last few weeks, we’ve been discovering that rhythm again, and probably more importantly, the enjoyment that writing has given us in the past.

We’re also finding that many of our older chapter—ones written more than 12 months ago—that we kept aside for the second book, have a slightly different voice to what we’re writing now. When we’ve come across this in the past, we’ve often gone through a painfully slow edit/rewrite where we try to save as much of the old as possible, whilst adding in newly written sections. Our new plan in tackling this challenge has been to summarize a chapter with several dot points, the same as we would when brainstorming a new chapter, then go back and write the chapter anew. The biggest benefit this has brought is helping us avoid the stilted blending between old and new writing styles. Definitely worth a try if you’re finding yourself in a similar situation.

On another note, we’re also entering another short story contest through sffworld.com Rather than the post apocalyptic theme that saw us make it into anthology two years ago, The End - Visions of Apocalypse, where we got the opportunity to have a story beside some amazing authors like Hugh Howey and Michael J. Sullivan, this time we’re writing about alternate WWI scenarios. Pretty exciting to step away from the world of The Forgotten Kin for a little while and test our writing out in another genre!