Blog – Elspeth Cooper

Well. It’s been a minute, hasn’t it?

They say time flies when you’re having fun, and it’s certainly been flying around here. How the heck is it November already?

As to the “having fun” part, well, yes I have been, actually. Writing-wise I’ve been on a bit of a tear lately. Made some progress, despite my brain’s attempts to sabotage me, and all the disability-related embuggerances I have to put up with day-to-day. So since some of you have been asking, here’s an update on the Work In Progress.

The Dragon House

The manuscript itself is sitting at around 212k. There’s some fat still to trim, a couple more darlings to slay, and parts of the final act to put in place, so that’s not it’s final length, but expect a chunky book. It will be bigger than its predecessors, but that’s typical of a series-ender, as I’ve said before. There’s lots of moving parts to bring to an orderly stop, and of course a bazillion opportunities for me to trip myself up along the way.

But it continues to become more and more book-shaped as time goes on. Yes, I’m still writing. No, I still can’t say when it will be done, but just so we’re clear, IT WILL BE DONE, and enpublicated, if I have to film myself reading it aloud on YouTube* to do it.

The (not-so) Sekrit Projekt

I know it’s taking me an embarrassingly long time to finish the Wild Hunt Quartet, so I totally get that I should not be thinking about new projects, but writers’ brains being what they are** I didn’t have much choice about it.

I’ve talked before about some spin-off novella ideas that have been percolating. There’s some very, VERY early stuff I wrote about Gair’s adoptive family that was pruned from the main story for reasons of space/relevance/pacing that I thought might make an interesting coda to the series, so I kept it. This is the basis of novella idea 1.

I also have a favourite character I’ve always wished I could have done more with, but there wasn’t room in Gair’s story to tell theirs as well. Enter novella idea 2.

The third novella concept concerns reckoning with the past while trying to find a way to move forward into a new life after your old one ends.

There’s a couple more ideas brewing as well, about historical events that are foundational to the Quartet as a whole, which I think might stretch the old writing muscles a bit.

So, five ideas. I’m being cagey with the details because spoilers, obviously, but also because this is the first time I’m putting these ideas out there as A Thing I Want To Do when the current Thing is finished. Something about them just made my brain go *ping*.

So what am I going to do with them?

Honest answer? I don’t know yet. I don’t even know if Wild Hunt novellas are something readers will want. All of them will round out the world and the reading experience, but none of them are critical to enjoying the Quartet as it stands (or will stand, or . . . you know what I mean). They’d be like bonus content or side quests. They’re not contracted works, I haven’t discussed them with my agent or publisher and I will not be touching *any* of them until TDH is buttoned up and delivered because that is my absolute priority.

But I have created a directory structure for them on my laptop, with the titles and a 2-3 line synopsis for each, because these stories were *clamouring* to be heard (see above re: writers’ brains). I had to write them down somewhere just to get them out of my head.

So. This is where I’m at. Apologies for the radio silence, but y’know. I’ve got a book to finish.

Featured image by Pexels on Pixabay

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*and nobody wants to see that, trust me

**”SQUIRREL!”

Whilst I was fossicking around in the dusty basement of my website on Friday, I came across a page of links to guest posts and other pieces I’d written for a variety of websites, way back when. Sadly, a couple of them had been lost to time, and even the Wayback Machine couldn’t help me find them. Sic transit gloria mundi, and all that.

Image of the title page of a book, printed on stained vintage paper. Text reads: "Being a memoir of the palaces, cancal and diverse wonders of the White Havens by a lady, with instructivenotes for the independent traveller."

Title page of The Second City, reproduced by kind permission of the University of Yelda

But I tracked down the others, and I thought I’d bring them all back under my roof, as it were, before they suffered the same fate. I wasn’t that careful about archiving these pieces back then, for which I am kicking myself now. You would think that with a career in IT behind me I would understand the value of backups.

Anyway. The question now, of course, is what do I do with them. Some relate to craft, or my road to being published, and at least one of them has aged like milk. Oh dear. I think I’ll find a home for the craft-y pieces here, because someone might be interested in a peek behind the scenes, but the piece I’m most proud of rescuing is the one I should be shot for not having archived way back in 2013 when I wrote it.

The Second City is a little bit of Wild Hunt universe metafiction, an extract from an in-world book. The website I wrote it for is long gone, but I think the text itself stands up. It deserves another airing, so I’ve added it to The World of the Wild Hunt section of my site.

I originally set out to write this piece in the style of a Victorian travel memoir but couldn’t sustain the tone, so it ended up more a love letter to the White Havens from a lady “d’un certain âge”. As for the traveller herself . . . I can’t help but imagine the stories she could tell!