The Sniper

My third novel, but it will be the first I will progress beyond the first draft stage.
Although 'The Sniper' is its proverbial 'working title', I can see that I'd like to retain it as the title, even though the only true sniper in the novel has only a line of dialogue, and that reported as having been spoken by him.

But his actions , if not quite critical, have a significant bearing on actions on a number of the novel's key characters.

I intend to write more frequent blog posts in the coming months detailing my progress: I'm targeting the end of April for its completion
(I'll also be writing a radio play for submission to RTE's PJ O'Connor radio drama competition, so I won't be focussed solely on the novel)

I'll be starting my review/revision work on this coming Monday, January 23rd.

I Love The Night, latest

I haven't done anything further with this first draft, as I've since written two original novels, although each only to first draft.

First draft, for me, will probably always be: complete what I expect will be the essence of the novel, without using either a spellchecker or thesaurus, but just basically getting the main elements, plot, scenes, characters, ...yadda, yadda, yadda,.... down on paper, so that I will then have something to work on

Short Story Competition

Submitted my (first) entry to the annual Francis McManus short story competition today
(deadline day).
I called it 'A Desert Mystery', although its actually more horror, than mystery story.
Its got a nice little twist in the tail which I don't believe anybody would see coming from halfway into the story.

I'm quite pleased with it although I was very surprised the amount of revising I had to do, particularly after now having written three novels, admittedly each only to first draft stage; a radio play, and another short story competition entry (Dublin City library competition).
Part of the reason for this was the nature of the story which required me to blend two completely different tones, and styles of writing.
Also I completely changed the starting-off point for the story after discovering I had so much more story that I needed to tell, when I'd already neared half-way on the original draft.

Although I may yet find out to the contrary when I'm working on reviewing/revising 'The Sniper', I think you can be that much looser in your language with a novel, - particularly a genre novel, - than you need to be with a short story
Even a genre story