The merry month of May brings many things, among them, Star Wars Day on the fourth, Cinco de Mayo on the fifth, Mother’s Day on the 12th and of course everyone’s favourite on the 22nd, National Vanilla Pudding Day. One thing it doesn’t bring is another new release from me, Katie Berry.
Fear not, however, I have good news. CLAW Resurrection is nearing completion and is preparing to go into post-production here at Katie Berry Books. With that in mind, I thought I would give you a little more insight into my process. If you enjoy these thoughts, please let me know, and I can give you more of them since I’m full of handy tips and tricks after so many years of writing here in my little wordsmith shop.
With the end of the novel drawing to a close, the real fun begins–the second draft. I refer to it as the Frankenstein stage because the story itself resembles nothing more than a shambling monstrosity of what it will one day become. And so, in Mary Shelley’s honour, I give it that name (And yes, I realise the monster was not called Frankenstein). It is at this stage many authors will stick their manuscript in a drawer for a month, figuratively speaking, and sometimes quite literally, depending on how old-school they are. But I eschew tradition and dive right in and tackle my second draft right away.
In the third and fourth passes, I continue to mould the story into something that is fast-paced, exciting, scary, funny and hopefully heartwarming at times. And finally, through dogged perseverance and attention to detail, I craft the story into something more sleek and streamlined, something filled with the vivid locations, action, humour and horror you’ve come to expect from a Katie Berry novel. Unfortunately, that takes time. I am currently working at the rate of about one novel every six months and I hope to continue that pace into the future. Most days, I work seven days a week, eight to ten hours a day and that has certainly been the case with Resurrection.
But this time when I am done, I will be taking a month off since I will be moving. With that said, I will still try to get a thousand words in per day so I am at least working somewhat on my next project.
And that project is another Lively Deadmarsh novel! This will be a standalone novel, not a four-book series like ABANDONED. Entitled, BESIEGED, it’s an interesting little tale of the high seas, high action and untold horror, and something of which I will tell you more of as I get closer to its production.
Once BESIEGED has been released to the wild, I will begin work on the fourth novel in the CLAW series, CLAW Retribution, which will be a crossover novel with the characters from both the CLAW and ABANDONED series coming together. Retribution is the novel that sets up ABANDONED II: Continuum, but more of that to come in the future.
And now it’s time to close this rather lengthy newsletter. If you have any questions about my writing that are burning a hole in your eReader, please reply to this newsletter and I will answer the top questions over the next few newsletters to give you more insight.
Time for the lucky winners of this month’s draws! The audiobook of their choice goes to fluffnplush@xxxxxx.com. And the winner of an autographed Katie Berry paperback delivered to their door is going to gdburnaman@xxxxxx.com.
Don’t forget, if you’re not a Katie Berry Books Insider Subscriber, you’re missing out on some great prizes, along with free short stories and surprise draws (more to come soon). You can join here to get those short stories right away and your chance to win in the upcoming draws: https://katieberry.ca/become-a-katie-berry-books-insider-and-win/
Till next month, good health and great reads,
-Katie Berry