“Fast Track”

Fast Track is Mac Durridge’s latest case.


On the NSW Central Coast, Mac Durridge has been asked by Sophie, his on-again, currently off-again girlfriend, to look into the disappearance of her friend, Central Coast Network News reporter Linda Carmody.

Linda has been on extended paid leave from CCNN while she runs down a news story. She regularly disappears for weeks at a time, investigating this story. This time, though, she missed a mutual friend’s hen party with no excuse. Very out of character.


As an author, I was faced with a bit of a problem. I enjoyed writing two series featuring two different P.I.s: Mac Durridge, an ex-NSW cop now flogging his wares as a PI in a small coastal town, and Nick Harding, an ex-AFP Financial Crimes investigator who is now flogging his wares as a PI in a much larger coastal town (Sydney).

I didn’t know which one to work on next.

I split the baby and decided to write both. One huge crime spanning the state. Each PI gets pulled into the case independently. In fact, the first half of each book has no reference to the other PI at all. They connect at the halfway point, and by the third act, they’re quasi-partners.

All of the regular characters from past books are there, and a couple of new ones are added.

Like young Josh Cole, a thirteen-year-old, who hires Mac to find his stolen coin collection. A seemingly trivial case to open the story, yet the conclusion pivots on the information he gains helping the young lad.

Cynthia Tanner and Joe Mason are state and federal employees, respectively, working hard on the development of Australia’s first high-speed rail network.

If you’re interested in becoming an ARC reviewer, fill in this form. Otherwise, it’ll be available at all good and evil bookstores on 18 July.

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Self Editing

The dumbest thing you can do as a writer is edit your own work. And yes, I do it too, primarily for financial reasons. I have beta readers who catch a lot of things, but not everything. That’s not possible. Good editors are not cheap. And outside of traditional publishing, how do you know if the person editing is any good?

Back to the “Why Indie” post, this is tantamount to shooting myself in the foot. If I put out something with poor quality, it hurts me and every other indie author trying to gain credibility. Having an editor should ensure higher-quality work, right?

After 15 years, I’ve come up with a few tips on becoming your own editor.

First, I highly recommend buying this book. It’s an excellent guide (if you follow it).

From the blurb: Chapters on dialogue, exposition, point of view, interior monologue, and other techniques take you through the same processes an expert editor would go through to perfect your manuscript. Each point is illustrated with examples, many drawn from the hundreds of books Browne and King have edited.

Second, take your time. It’s never finished when you think it’s finished. Allocate more calendar time editing than you’ve spent writing your first draft. Make it as much, if not more, of your job as drafting the story.

Find plot holes. After finishing your first draft, set it aside for a month. Try to forget it as much as you can. Then, sit down and read through your story with fresh eyes. Keep a notepad beside you (or add comments to your document) and note each time you’re pulled out of the story for whatever reason.

Some plot holes or discontinuities can be resolved simply with an added sentence. Others may require a section to be rewritten. Sometimes, an unresolved setup in Act One must be addressed in Act Three. Occasionally, it might need to be deleted if it adds nothing to the story.

That’s okay. That’s what editing is.

Fix your punctuation. Not too many commas, not too few. Proper punctuation in dialogue.

Don’t trust spell check. An incorrect work in a sentence that is still a legitimate word won’t be flagged. See what I did there? This is less of a problem now since most spellchecking is contextual. But a decade ago? Big minefield.

My final step is to have the story read aloud to me while I read along. I edit in Word (first draft in Scrivener), and in Word, there’s a feature called ‘Read Aloud‘ in the Review menu.

Listening to your story will catch awkward word choices, missed typos, repeated words and more.

And when you’ve finished with the process, head back to the beginning and do it again.

And again.

You want people to enjoy the story, right? Don’t let them get hung up on the non-story parts.

Your thoughts?

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