Well, it’s a little longer than two weeks, but hey – forgive me a couple at least since February is a short month anyway!
Watching sales tick is giving ME a tick, so instead of hyperventilating, over-exciting myself, freaking out or any engaging in some other nervous behaviour that my brain might suddenly decide to try on for size, I’ve been hard at work on my next work.
I learned a lot and am still learning as I talk to people, reviewers, marketers etc, but most of all I am learning to be more expressive about how I write. Grammarly has analysed over 3,000,000 words that I’ve typed in the last 7 days and I’ve edited the first 8 chapters so hopefully the next time we go to work on a manuscript a lot of the work will be done.
I never intended for Exceptionally Unconventional to be a series, and I’m not working on a “book two” manuscript. This is an entirely different story based on different experiences and situations. HOWEVER…
For those who have reached out wanting to know what happened next, or wanting to know more about certain characters, I do mean to go back over a few of them in the future. Specifically the duke and his origin story was something I wrote heavily about in my notes and in my head, it became much more detailed than I expected. But since his story happened off-page to a degree, I thought he was a character that I could expand on one day.
At the moment, I am crafting an array of perfectly awful people on a page, counterbalanced by some very lovely ones. Although this story ended well in real life for some of the characters, it didn’t for others so I have a lot to work through, skirt around, adjust for theatrics and just in general play with. It’s a lot more fun than writing the first book, to be honest. For some reason I feel like I have more freedom now. And in many ways I suppose I do.
Before, it was for my mum. Now this story – this one is for me.
Victoria Clarke 