IWSG – Welcome to 2020, Insecure Writers

Yes, welcome to 2020, all insecure writers. Thank you to Alex J Cavanaugh and the IWSG team for letting us miss New Year’s Day as our posting date this month!

The awesome co-hosts for the January 8 posting of the IWSG are T. Powell Coltrin, Victoria Marie Lees, Stephen Tremp, Renee Scattergood, and J.H. Moncrieff!

Please join me in visiting them and thanking them for their hard work.

Welcome to 2020

What are you excited about for the coming year?  What are you insecure about?  And, the question of the month from our hosts: what made you start writing – what was your tipping point where you just HAD to write?

Easy answer, but you’ve had this one before, so I’ll just give you a picture…

George and Fred, my heroes.

It was this picture that I used when I asked my illustrator, Dani English, if she could come up with some sort of logo for my imprint, Princelings Publications.

If you look closely, you’ll see that she’s included their whiskers!

It makes a neat logo on the spine and back of my books, and on the inside front page.  And, of course, at the top of my web page.

I realised when writing this, that picture of the pair of them was for Christmas 2009, so it’s already ten years ago.  The stories that came from imagining their adventures, princes running through tunnels joining castles, started from some daft ideas me and my online friends in a guinea pig forum bandied about to explain how our pigs communicated with each other.

Bob and Doris had Lupin-Buckmore, Nimrod (a female), and many more.  ‘Pigpog’ had Mr Smallweed, Vladimir, and Pogo, and Dawn had Mariusz, Saku, and later, Willoughby. Of course I had Fred, George, Victor and Hugo.  These became my main characters, and they all persist right into the final book, which I’m working on at present. Oh, Smallweed became a lord, and Vladimir bowed out as Fred became king, but I suppose even he theoretically made it into book nine.

So that was the tipping point.

What am I excited and insecure about?  The last book in the series, of course. Can I make it good enough?  Are any of them good enough?

I’m working on the second draft of Princelings Revolution, and had a great idea on new years day when I saw something on television. Actually, I was watching the extra bits on the extended Lord of the Rings DVDs, and Peter Jackson was talking about the Steward of Gondor’s motivation.  It inspired me to think more about my plot twists, and the characterisation of the evil ones!

Princelings of the East audiobooks

The other thing I’m excited about is the Princelings audiobooks. The first is nearing completion, and I spent some enjoyable evenings over Christmas listening to the chapters. You never know, it may even be out before next month’s IWSG post.

IWSG Anthology

I hope you have a good 2020. I hope the finalists whose stories made it in to this year’s anthology have a spectacular one!  I’m looking forward to reading it.

Have a very happy and productive new year – with not too many insecurities!