Kia ora, readers!
My goodness, it’s been a minute since my last newsletter. I’ve been … busy? No, that’s not strictly true. I’ve been prioritising other things; that’s more accurate. But I’m here now, because I have exciting news.
THE THIRD BOOK IN THE SEEN IN SILVERBRIDGE SERIES IS FINISHED AND PREPPED FOR RELEASE!
I’m in love with it. It’s a great book, and I’m very proud. The cover is great, the editing is slick, and the formatting is clean. The title of this book is A Fiancé Has Flatlined, and it sees the Seen team back on another case. It’ll be released in June.
Luce and Jordan’s engagement party was going beautifully… Then the body turned up.
When Arrows goalkeeper Charlie Harkness is found dead of a suspected overdose, the night goes from champagne to crime scene in under an hour.
And somehow, Luce ends up in handcuffs.
She’s released. But the questions don’t stop. Because Charlie, it turns out, was about to blow the whistle on something buried deep inside the Arrows, and someone made sure he never got the chance.
I know it might be uncouth to sing the book’s praises, but I think it’s a great instalment to the series. It’s fun and silly, but it also deals with more serious issues than the first two books, because the team is getting older, so their problems are more adult.
When we left them in Book 2, Luce had just accepted Jordan’s proposal of marriage, just as Huds was starting to realise he’d been harbouring more complicated feelings for her than he thought. Faven had come into her own as an investigative reporter, and her confidence is finally starting to grow. Rodney had reached a milestone in his relationship with his daughter Ruby, in which she realised she could lean on him for support more than she’d thought.
This new book pushes each of the characters further, giving them more challenges to deal with in their relationships. We also see them in a whole new environment: we’re off to Sydney, Australia! The team have to investigate the Silverbridge Arrows football team, who are competing in the Football World Cup over there.
Okay, so why did it take me so long to finish this book? The first book was written in about a year, the second in four months, and this one took … wait, it took 18 months?
Simply put, it took so long because I did a very bad job of planning and writing the first draft. I wrote about in a previous newsletter: The Dangers of Overplotting
I outlined the living shit out of this book. 51 pages of single-spaced character outlines! Too much detail.
The first draft was massive. Like, 130,000 words. So I cut it down, rewrote it from page 1, then rewrote it again, and again, and again … and again. For over 500 hours (I know because I track every session with my self-built app, Juju), I sat on my couch with coffee, listening to various movie soundtracks, typing on Scrivener, backspacing almost as much as writing. It was hard. And glorious.
In February, I finally finished it and sent it to the editor. She did an incredible job, as always, and now the book is being formatted and prepped for official release! The most exciting time of an author’s career!
YOU CAN ORDER IT NOW!
The book is live for pre-sale now on Amazon, but tell you what… Since you’ve read this far, I’d love to give you a free copy to read in exchange for a review on Goodreads, Amazon, or Storygraph. Just hit me a reply, and I’ll email you an epub.
Thank you so much for reading, and I can’t wait for you to join the Seen team for another adventure. I’ve already written the first draft of the fourth book, so I promise it won’t be as long a wait until the next one.
Happy reading!