I’ve done it! I’ve only gone and flipping well done it! What have you done Stevenson? I hear you cry. I’ll tell you what I’ve done, I’ve finished the first draft of my next novel; that’s what!

The last nine months have been like some hellish, torturous literary nightmare where I have wrestled with the Orcs of comedy writing and emerged scathed (badly scathed) but victorious. Now it all seems like a dream and I can’t quite believe it.

You see, I love writing Joe Wilkie. He’s a lot of fun to work with is that cute and curious little chap. I love to get his words all mixed up for him and I love to create all his little adventures, anecdotes and idiosyncrasies. He’s just a brilliant character and it has been my absolute great pleasure to see him develop.

However…

This time it’s been like pulling teeth!

And I’ve never actually pulled a tooth personally but I’ve had them pulled professionally and it’s not a great experience. Especially for the tooth one imagines. But I digress.

No, the reason for this personal descent into novel writing hades is purely my own fault. What’s the expression now? Proper Planning and Preparation Prevents Piss Poor Performance. Yeah, well, I didn’t read that last line very closely.

I didn’t plan this novel as well as all the others and it shows in the fact that it’s taken nine months to do the first draft. First drafts just shouldn’t take that long to write.

I planned the first four chapters meticulously in the trusty old exercise book but then I got carried away with myself and started going off at tangents and had to keep reeling myself back in and re-writing this, that and the other. I’ve had to scrap whole passages simply because they were little more than mawkish shash that didn’t deserve to be read by the decent, honest, hard-working book buying public.

And so what is normally a joy; writing a Wilkie novel, became an arduous slog where at times I scarcely dared to turn the laptop on in fear of what horrors would pour forth from the keyboard as my unprepared mind sent all sorts of deranged and erratic signals to my poor, overworked fingertips.

There have been so many ups and downs during the process. On the up side, I wrote 6,500 words in one day and was delighted with all of them. On the down side I wrote about 850 one day which were then mercilessly deleted without hesitation or qualm. And then there was a period of about six weeks where I didn’t even write one damn word because the mere thought of it made me want to puke.

But!

Here I am, bloodied but unbowed (actually I am a tad bowed but that doesn’t sound as good). I have crushed the wretched thing underfoot at last by sheer, almost superhuman, effort and the carcass of the slain beast stands at 82,278 words. Which is actually 8,000 more than my last novel, Vole, when it was complete.

There now follows several rounds of editing before I’ll release it but by then I’ll have it honed and polished to a high degree of excellence and that will be a joy compared to writing it now that I’ve reached the end of the long, dark first draft tunnel.

You may be thinking that after all I’ve just said that I don’t like the book. Au contraire mon ami! Nothing could be further from the truth. It’s a very good novel in my opinion and one that I’m now very keen to get out into the public domain. And so it bloody well should be after all that I’ve been through with it.

It’s everything you’ve come to expect in a Joe Wilkie novel. The bumbling but loveable protagonist gets himself into all sorts of scrapes and shenanigans. There are multiple violent outbursts from Lady Stark-Raven. There’s an angry mob (a common occurrence in Blessham). There’s an antagonist like we haven’t seen before who Joe locks horns with and a host of other crazy characters both old and new. What’s not to like?

There’s also a bit of a different side to Joe in this one and he isn’t the hopeless doormat he usually is. Well, not all the time. Most of the time but not all. But I won’t give too much away at this stage.

When will it be released? Well, I don’t have an exact date in mind but I’m looking at early December hopefully so that everyone can fill their Christmas stockings with it. I’ve put the manuscript away for now until next week and will return to it on November 1^st to begin the editing which gives me one month to buff it up and sand off all those splintery rough edges. I think I can just about manage that.

For the next few days I shall simply bask in the radiant aura of my victory over adversity and maybe have a glass of wine or three. Maybe even a fourth.

Sod it, I’ll have a bottle.

Watch this space for further updates.