I’ve heard it said that the second book is always the hardest, and I’ve certainly found that with writing book 2 of the Hybrid series, which I’m calling Hunted. I started a very early draft back in my college days before I’d even done the first major redraft of Hybrid, but it’s taken me nearly a decade to finish a first draft, after years of struggling to find what direction the book needed to take. I had plenty of ideas of roughly where the story was going, but it took three re-writes of the first half of the book before I finally felt it was right, and that was before I even had the ideas to fill the second half! Other than the ending which came to me fairly early on, I had no idea what happened after the midway point I kept getting stuck at. And if it weren’t for all you amazing fans who’ve given me the motivation I needed to really bully my brain into working out what the story needed to be and then getting it written, I would probably still be struggling with the second half even now!

One thing I am seeming to find when it comes to novels is I have a tendency to start in the wrong place. The first three chapters of Hybrid were determined all those years ago when my cousin, ‘the real Lady Sarah’, helped me brainstorm them and then left me to write the rest of the story, but originally events that happen around the midway point were in much earlier chapters. It was only after getting so far with the very first working draft that I realised it didn’t work and the tone just became too depressing too quickly, with nothing to balance it out. There was no sense of who Nick was before becoming a werewolf, no sense of who his friends and family were, and without that vital connection between reader and characters there was no impact when anything happened to them. A similar thing happened with Hunted – originally I was going to start a few months down the line after the events of the first book, but in the end it seemed to work much better to start almost immediately after where the first left off and deal with the psychological state Nick’s left in at the end of the first one, and the new challenges for him to adjust to as a result of the way the first one ends.

I also seem to end up adding another major character in before I can finish a draft. Vince didn’t exist in the original working draft of Hybrid – it was only when I got so far that I felt there was a need for a second vampire character before I could finish the book. And with Hunted, there’s a new character who also got added in after getting so far with the working draft before realising there was a need for her, and adding her in allowed me to add in some missing pieces between the work I’d already done and the ending I had in mind, and helped shape the second half of the book. I’m finding a similar thing is now happening with the dark fantasy I want to write as well, which is only in the very early stages – I have about five rough chapters that need a lot of work still, but a new character has already come into being during some workshop meetings at Huddersfield Author’s Circle and now I feel he has a major part to play in the story. And I also feel like I need to add in events that take place before the original opening I had in mind.

Perhaps this is one of the drawbacks of not sitting down and planning out a story before working on it, but I’ve just never been able to work like that. I get a rough idea and I just run with it and see where it takes me, and eventually a story takes shape and all the random ideas and scenes I’ve made notes of fit into that story, and the missing pieces become apparent and slot in, like a jigsaw. But it’s only when I get so far with an idea that I can see what the story needs to be as a whole. Until then it’s like I have pieces of the jigsaw but I’m working without the full image as a reference of where each piece goes, and it’s only when I have so many pieces that I can see what that full image should be and what the right pieces are, and where they need to be.

And in addition to the challenge of putting all those story pieces together to make a whole, I have felt that writing a sequel has been a much greater challenge than if my second book had been a standalone book. I’ve been very aware that I’m no longer writing just for myself, but for fans of the first Hybrid now as well, and I’ve felt some pressure to do the first one justice and make sure the next instalment is every bit as enjoyable for all of you who’ve loved the first so much, and that it’s a satisfactory addition to the story of my fictional self’s struggles as a werewolf. It’s with a certain level of nerves and anxiety I’ve sent the manuscript to my four beta readers (all fans of the first Hybrid themselves), but the feedback so far has been really good so I hope the rest of you will love Hunted just as much.

The paid work is almost done for another year, then I will work on finalising Hunted to send to Wild Wolf asap, and get straight on with book 3 of the series. Thanks for your patience guys and I hope Hunted will prove worth the wait!