I’m in a time of transition with my writing.
This scene at my desk this morning, with fresh snow outside the window, is all about transition too. Yesterday the temperature reached a high of +6°C. Later this week, my weather app predicts lows of -14°C. Variable weather is one of the symptoms of global warming. The whole world is in a time of transition and change.
Time of Transition with global warming
Last year I did a lot of reading about climate change. I felt the world-building for my Survivor universe needed some improvement. Global warming has also found its way into a new book I’m working on. New Blood will be Book One of a new series, The Vampyre’s Household, and in it is a scene of a planet dying of extreme heat. New Blood is a change from the Survivor universe, that’s for sure: a fantasy about vampires that turns out to be not-quite fantasy, but not-quite sci-fi either. I seem to excel at books that don’t slot neatly into a category.
New Blood is unique in that I wrote it in five and a half months – quite an improvement over the five years it took to write Survivor. After publishing Survivor, it became evident I needed to come up with a faster way to write. My newly-adopted pantster approach absolutely worked for me, but was way too slow. I needed to infuse my writing with some ‘new blood’, so to speak. So I headed off to my favourite science fiction convention, Ad Astra, with the intention of meeting someone who could help me.
Time of Transition in how I write
Enter local writer Jane Ann McLachlan, who invited me to enrol in some writing workshops she was running later in the summer – workshops that became the foundation for her excellent workbook, Downriver Writing. I quickly realized my biggest stumbling block. I invariably started to write before I’d answered two important questions: who is the bad guy, and what is at stake? The natural-born storytellers out there will roll their eyes because those concepts are so intrinsic to a good story, they’re hardly worth mentioning. But people like me – who don’t see the forest for the trees – apparently need to have the obvious pointed out! That’s where a tool like Downriver Writing ended up being so helpful.
Future Plans
I finished New Blood last week, and have sent the draft to my ‘wise reader’ for feedback. Then it goes to my beta readers. After the revisions, it will need a cover. But before I publish it, I want to write the sequel. I’m not going to leave my readers hanging for two years, wondering what happens next, the way I have with Survivor. The Vampyre’s Household, Book Two is tentatively titled Dark Blood, and is midway through its ‘downriver’ outline.
This doesn’t mean that I’ve forgotten The GMH Project. Jian, the protagonist of Survivor–Book One in the series–is dear to my heart. I’ve decided to write a prequel to Survivor, and as usual, I know the character arc but need to come up with a bad guy to propel the story line. The sequel, Sundered, is half-written but I’ve had to step back in order to come up with–you guessed it!–the right bad guy.
So sit tight, everyone. The time of transition is workings its miracles. The weather is changing and spring will soon arrive. I just know it will bring me all the bad guys I need. May it bring you a wealth of good books to read!
July 2025 note from LM Spilsbury
‘m preserving this post for historical interest. Many things have changed since its publication. I unpublished Survivor in 2021 and replaced it with two books. Immunity Cage tells the back story of the protagonist, Jian, and includes some material from Survivor. The bulk of Survivor, with some changes and additions, became Immunity Bond. I’ve changed the series name from The GMH Project to Modified Humans. The sequel mentioned above, Sundered, is now Immunity Flight.