Done but not quite dusted
Posted 13 March 09 by Scott AndrewsThe radio crackled and then I heard the boy whisper “I am so fucking sick of people in uniforms telling me what to do.”
Well it’s done. The first draft, at least. Operation Motherland is complete.
Now I get to do a polish on my rough draft and I would normally then send it out to my readthrough crew. However time pressures are tight so I’m going to have to just sit on it for a week and then do a fresh, final readthrough on my own and get it my superhumanly patient editor by the end of the month.
I was commissioned to write OM in October 2007, so it’s been a hell of a long process, interrupted by two months in New Zealand, the birth of baby, an enforced house move and four, count ‘em, changes of 9-5 job.
That’s not to mention the fact that I realised a third of the way in that I was cocking it up royally and had to completely rejig the whole thing to fix a fundamental problem that was derailing the writing process.
So all in all, not the easiest of births, but it was worth it, I hope.
It’s quite a different book to School’s Out, although it’s a direct sequel. School’s Out was small town English horror with a Lord of the Flies vibe; Operation Motherland is big, widescreen war movie stuff, some of it set in post-Cull Iraq. So it’s got a much broader sweep.
It’s also not entirely narrated by Lee, as School’s Out was. This time Matron gets to narrate half the book, so it literally has a different voice to its predecessor.
A possible third and final book – not yet set in stone or commissioned, but I’m hoping – would be different again in all sorts of interesting ways. But more of that if and when it happens.
In the meantime, I’ll keep the site updated with details of publication dates and suchlike gubbins.
