Work has started on the third volume of the Drake and Hepple mysteries. After many weeks of digging around and looking for ideas, I finally started to write this week. These early weeks are, for me, the most challenging. I need to get what I think of as a scaffold in place before I start building. That scaffold consists of the main plot action, the main characters and the locations.
Once those are in place and I am convinced that they are sufficiently interesting to work on then I start writing. Of course I may go back and rewrite these early parts but at least the folder on my computer called N4 (Novel 4) starts to get populated. There is no title yet. That seems to grow out of the work once written.
So I have the main locations. I have the main plot ideas. My detective force is still in place from the previous two novels so they will be there again, developing of course. The main characters for this plot are beginning to take shape but I don't understand them all yet. That will come as I write and of course that suggests there will be a lot of editing. I am up and away but still at the stage of hoping this will work out OK rather than being totally involved in it.