The Costa Coffee Short Story Awards, more editing and mapping your fantasy world

Alright lads, it’s been a while.

Although the world around me seems to have descended into some dystopian hellscape (I’m living at the heart of the fresh UK lockdowns) everything has been rather calm on the writing front.

I’ve felt a little dry on creativity when it comes to the short stories but that’s probably because I expended a lot of mental energy on my entry for the Costa Coffee Short Story Awards. I’m quite confident in saying that my entry is the best short I’ve ever come up with and is the culmination of a long and tired writing progress over the past year or so. I used to write short stories a bit like a child would in English class, trying to squeeze a beginning, middle and end into 3,000 words, but the last 18 months has taught me that short stories are much more an expression of feeling, an insight into a longer, more detailed and muddied story. I feel like my entry for Costa Coffee was the epitome of this understanding and my best work to date. I have no idea how well it will do but either way it will appear on here in six months time so keep an eye out on for After the First Death.

I’ve put short story projects to the back of my mind for now, but I’ve got a few more bits and pieces in the pipeline.

If you follow my site a lot (hey mum) then you will know that my latest short story is based in the fantasy world of Earthguard, the same setting for my novel, A Better Crown. I have written a few short stories around my work in progress, forging character back stories and giving me a better idea as to who the characters are and why they act in such a way. A lot of them became flash backs, which feature quite heavily in A Better Crown.

This one, Hunger, didn’t make the cut for the novel but I think you will enjoy it all the same. It considers the war which tore through the northern kingdom of Earldom, 18 years before the events of A Better Crown, showing the impact of the conflict on the ordinary Earlish people.

Speaking of A Better Crown; I have made some considerable headway when it comes to the book’s details and finer points. I drew my fifth, and final, map of Earthguard last week, plotting out the cities, countries, continents and castles of my world and bringing a little more clarity to the book. I now have a world that makes sense, in terms of physical geography, and which provides enough breadth and depth for further novels. I’ve also been drawing a up a few sketches for some of the major cities, just to give a little more definition to my descriptions; The Black Fort, Greybolt and The Spires have some physical parameters to them now.

The fifth, and final, iteration of Earthguard.

At the moment I’m struggling to fit the cities in with their rivers, how does it all work with a walled city? I’m going to have to do my research on that one but I’m currently cursing our race’s insistence on building settlements near water, it’s very inconvenient for my vision of Earthguard.

In terms of the book itself, I’m storming on with the editing process. I’ve fully edited 23 chapters, two out of four parts and 230 A4 pages. Whatever way I look at it; I’m making progress.

From here on out it should be plain sailing (he says furiously touching wood) because the rest of my first draft was written over the last year. The quality of writing is better, the narrative is clearer, it’s fresher in my mind and fewer edits or rewrites are required.

I would like to say that next time I give you all an update I will have finished part three and be well on the home straight but I think that may be a little too ambitious.

Anyway, enough from me. Stay safe out there, check out my latest short story, one of my other blog posts or an extract from my novel; A Better Crown, if you’re bored.

Stay strong, keep reading, keep writing.