As you all know (well if you’ve been keeping up with my posts that is) I threw in the towel during Nano and 50K words didn’t happen. But what did happen was a small selection of short stories and my return to the love of writing, so not a total loss.

One of the short tales was entitled Black Gold, a story I originally called Do You Believe? a tale I did for Daily Picspiration which started life as a wee 1.5K compete horror flash fiction work about Fairies but ended up as a 7.5K short scary story. I have never had anyone look at my work that has been longer than flash, and certainly never anything that has been a first draft, but this was different.

I really enjoyed writing this, extending it wasn’t a chore but felt right and I had a niggling feeling it could be longer. As my track record isn’t that great with longer pieces I ignored my gut and just plodded on and finished when I felt I should. It needed a ton of work but I had 3 other horror short stories to tell so did as I always did and simply moved on.

It wasn’t until a conversation with a good friend, who happens to be a writer and editor (yes Miranda I’m talking about you lol) asked if I could help her out with the inner workings of Fiverr that inspiration struck. What if I could help Miranda and myself at the same time? So grabbing the bull by the horns I signed up and asked Miranda if she would consider taking on editing Black Gold, that way I’d get an edited story and she would understand all the ins and out of a commission within Fiverr. Win Win.

Sending off a first draft is very scary let me tell you. It needed serious work but to be honest editing is not my thing, I get bored and can’t see the wood for the tree’s so to speak. Well in record time my tale was back with a detailed edit, including the awesome track changes in MS Word, but not only that a feedback document with great insight and suggestions.

I knew that the editing front would fairly extensive, I’m rubbish at grammar, my spelling and dialogue leaves a lot to be desired and to be fair I think she has been really kind. Saying that something unexpected happened. Miranda could se a whole ton of potential, up to 30K or dare I say it even 60K worth of material I could expand to.

She, very cleverly I might add, broke my tale into 3 sections (it only actually had 2 LOL) and the advice given about the sections allowed me to look at this tiny horror short with new eyes. I might actually have a proper full length novel – shock horror.

First things first I contacted her to thank her and check she wasn’t just being nice. Turns out she wasn’t and is keen for me to take this further. So 2017 will see me working with Miranda (check out her editing service) officially to produce a book – Novella or Novel I’m not sure – but one thing is for sure, it will be scary, it will be suspenseful, there will be death and destruction and it will be written.