A strange few weeks

16 Dec

It’s been a strange few weeks. Due to a series of cock-ups, The Ferret Files was launched on Amazon and then on Apple way before the press campaign was ready. In fact, the people who are organising the release still haven’t got their act together after five weeks worth of messing about. Given it’s Christmas, this is kind of understandable but at the same time unacceptable. Hence I had to just get on with it.

I’ve discovered that this requires two different hats: the writer’s cap and the author’s fedora. I wore the writer’s cap for months on end, staring out the window when plotting story lines, and using it to scoop cold water onto my keyboard when the keys were sizzling from an obsessive dump of ideas. I’m done with the cap for now. It’s onto the fedora, which means I get to talking about the novel and the characters in it, rather than the process of writing.

What I’ve found is that I have the weirdest feelings when it comes to Ferret and friends. Now they’re in the public domain, they’re no longer exclusively my characters: suddenly, they belong to the readers as well. Everyone who meets Ferret will have a slightly different take on who he is. The same applies to Cyrano, Marcus and Tristan, Damien and Eric, Flamen and Sir Edward, and Marianne and Juliet. In a way it’s liberating to set the cast free, but it also places a lot of responsibility on my shoulders. Their stories are not yet finished: we’ve still got a way to go to find out what happens to them all. I’ve plotted a trilogy of books with the same core cast. I know roughly where we’re headed, but not the fine detail. There are also three short stories which take place between books two and three. Bob will play a greater part in these tales. The characters whose arcs I’m really looking forward to developing are the hard-done-to juniors: Eric, Rajesh and Xara. And of course the centurion. Boy, are we all in for a surprise with him.

It took me a long time to get Ferret to a degree of polished that I can live with. I’ve downloaded quite a few cheap e-books and the level of finish is not something I’d be happy with. But then I have a history of producing quality output. If I lend my name to something, it will be good. Anyone who buys into The Ferret Files is buying into a world full of crazy people and cracked ideas. Once you read it, you’ll get that. For a long time I wondered about writing under a pseudonym. Outside of my life as a writer and author, I have an IT consultancy to run. In the end I felt that writing under a different name was the wrong thing to do. I wrote Ferret. I’m proud of my achievement. And it’s too late to back out now. It’s a done deal.

If there’s anything you’d like to know about Ferret and friends, drop me an email at: Phillip@detectingconsultant.com. I’ll answer the best questions in a future blog post.

Meanwhile, have a great Christmas y’all…