First Things First

A few months ago I put the word out that I thought I had found a new copy editor and I hoped to get Book 7 out by the end of March.

Long story short, that isn’t going to happen.

Book 7 won’t be out by the end of March. And the Book 7 that eventually gets published won’t be exactly what I had planned.

Want more details? Keep reading…

If you read Christmas in Beaufort, then you know where I left things with all of the characters. Things were in a good place. There were a few questions to be answered that lingered from The Stolen Bride, but there was no huge cliffhanger as there has been with some of the other books. 

Thanks to a whole variety of unexpected life events over the last year, I have been a bit overwhelmed and simply unable to get in as much writing time as necessary to complete the book.

Sometimes, though, these things can work out for the best. 

Route Recalculating

You know how when you’re using your GPS sometimes you’ll pull off to get a bite to eat, or you’ll end up wanting to take a side road? Your phone will chirp at you the familiar message that it’s recalculating the route. 

You might listen to it repeat the same notice a few times before just turning off the GPS and deciding to plug your destination in later, when you’re ready. 

Well, something kind of like that has happened with Book 7. 

I’ve been knowing I have a particular destination for Adam Fletcher and some other key characters, but in spite of having an outline and lots of character notes and even a substantial start on a manuscript, I never have been able to get far enough in to take things where I wanted them to go.

It feels like I’ve gotten stuck somewhere in one of the swamps that I was writing about in the story! At this point, I’ve come to the conclusion I need to head back out to the main road and try to travel a different way. 

This has happened to me before. 

Before I wrote The Smuggler’s Gambit, I spent WAY too long working on a book, interestingly that meandered through some of the same places that are featured in Book 7, and I ultimately abandoned it because I was getting too stuck on the story. I can only guess it’s because I know too much about the history and families of that area and so I struggle to let go enough to just write the fiction. 

It was when I ditched the manuscript for that going-nowhere project that I enjoyed a flood of creativity that ultimately led me to churn out The Smuggler’s Gambit in a matter of just a few months! Why? Because the story was working and I loved the characters. I didn’t feel like I was trying to fit square pegs into round holes nor did I feel like I was trying to meet certain mile markers in an outline just because I had already teased them in a book sneak preview.  

Insider Secret: Sometimes writers write scenes out of order. 

In every single one of the Adam Fletcher books I have written some of the scenes out of order. Sometimes it helps, especially when you’re dealing with complicated plot points or relationships. You want to make sure everything lines up correctly, so writing a landmark scene or even a final destination scene can sometimes be necessary to make sure that the scenes you write earlier in the book connect the right dots.

In the case of the Book 7 manuscript that I had been working on, there were several scenes I had written out of order, and I was able to tease some of that in book preview stuff, but you can imagine my dismay when it just wasn’t coming together the way I had hoped!

I’ve been dreading having to do this, but I am abandoning my current Book 7 manuscript as it is and I’m taking it in a bit of a different direction. I’m going to spare you any more book previews until I have a completed manuscript. A new title is also likely, but that will also have to be a surprise (because frankly I don’t even know what it will be yet!)

If you’re still with me at this point, I thank you for your patience. If I’m going to bring you a new Adam Fletcher Adventure, I want it to be the best it can be. I don’t want to just force something together that isn’t working. 

If you have any thoughts, complaints, encouragement, whatever, send it my way at ahoy (at) seaportpublishing.com. As always, I love hearing from you all!

Sincerely,

Sara Whitford

PS – I hope you all stay well while this nasty virus is going around! Wash your hands. Don’t touch your face. Avoid congregating in large groups. All that stuff we keep hearing.