Writing Edelweiss; Dark Science, part one.

So the time has come for the obligatory "this is how I wrote my first book" blog post. I apologise in advance to those who show up for the funny stuff, I'll try to make sure it isn't a dry read.

The Final Cover Image, courtesy of Craig Anderson Photography

Edelweiss started as a character: Dr Abigail Jones (who was never a real Doctor, just a healer in disguise). This was a character I developed to play in a Live Action Role Play and was probably the first character that I went to bed and dreamed about. She was very real to me. To this day I have other Larpers to thank for some of the characters... Rufus Frank, who you meet in Valerian, Captain Charles Echan, Mister Talphibious and Asa Lupine were all based on real people; Talphibious and Frank only loosely.

The setting is completely different to the LARP world I played, albeit with similarities. The original Abigail Jones was a member of the Temple of Shadows (ironically the good guys) so her path was never going to be easy. The story developed with her as a starting point but, as she was only a girl, I needed a caretaker who was loyal and who could remind her of where she came from when her ideas got too big for her boots. Stephen Lawrence was born as Paul Thomas Damas, a name I changed in later drafts for reasons that won't become clear until you read the second and third books.

My main protagonist was always going to be a dual threat of Catherine and the mystery murderer we meet in the prologue.What I didn't expect was for those two characters to take on their own stories throughout the series. It has been just as interesting for me to find out what they have been up to as it is for the reader. The trouble with writing character-driven stories is that sometimes they change the plot for themselves because of their attitudes and abilities. Abigail is particularly hard to write because she is always off doing her own thing. She needs a big group around her so that she can be constantly reigned back in. Usually for her own good. If she didn't have Stephen she would have marched straight from Beeton to Estora and got herself killed in chapter 2. So.

An alternative image, courtesy of Craig Anderson Photography

People often ask how I go about the process of writing and it is very simple. I sit down at a blank screen and I tell the stories that I would like to read. There isn't enough dark, nearly-horror-but-not-quite fantasy out there. When I have come across it (mentioning no names) I have found it a little flowery and hard to read in places. I think my style is very simple but I believe that simple can be more shocking at times. I guess all writing is subjective and it just comes down to what you like.

As for planning well, I started with the prologue as a back story for Abigail and just couldn't stop telling the story. I had to get her out of there so I did. Then I had to get her to Ronton Bay, so I did. After that things just kind of took care of themselves. I knew at some point Asa would come into play and that later she would get to the root of the problem - but in terms of planning that was about it. What I will say is that I worked on Edelweiss; Dark Science, part one for eight years before I put it into a real format and edited out the parts I didn't like. In the future I will post about some of these, though it will contain spoilers, so not yet...

There's no better feeling than holding the hard copy!

So during that eight years I hand wrote it, re-wrote it, typed it up, lost it to a computer error, typed it up again and then decided to commit myself and publish. Stories constantly evolve and change and even now, two and a half books later, I still have a hazy memory of what went into the final cut and what I left out. I spend a huge amount of editing time checking back on old details to make sure I have people's eye colour just right, or their back stories on point... I did keep a compendium of all the details but it changed so much between drafts it became useless.



Writing a book is time consuming, it is hard, it is confusing and it takes a lot of imagination. Then when you do produce work you imagine it isn't good enough to be read by anyone and that you should probably take it down. Nevertheless we persist, because stories need to be told and that's just how it is.

And now I have Edelweiss. Go check it out. At the very least it will give you a glimpse into my world.

Editing because I realised I didn't put a link to the book in so here we are: you can buy a copy of Edelweiss; Dark Science, part one (in either paperback or E-book) by following this link.