As some of you are aware, I’ve been writing my latest book using a discovery process. This is where you go into the project not knowing a whole lot about it, and find the plot and story as you write. I normally like to think on a book, let it ferment in my head for as much as a decade before coming out as something pretty much approaching a finished novel, where every character is known, pretty much every scene is visualised. However, whilst I have no end of ideas (I think I’m up to 19 books now), there’s no way I can spend a decade on each. If I want to be a commercial writer, I need to speed that process up and I genuinely believe that not only can I do that but feel if I get my process right, I reckon I could possibly get two books out a year (although there’s a lot of work that needs to be done to speed up and fine tune the editing process). And so I’ve been using the time Four Realms is sitting in piles waiting for people to say ‘yes’ (or ‘no’), to play around a bit, try different approaches to writing.
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I’ve not watched a lot of TV over the Xmas period – I’m even waiting to watch Doctor Who until I’ve got my new monitor set up – but one of the things that I did was a documentary on the late comedian, Bill Hicks.

I never got into the whole Bill Hicks thing when he was at the height of his popularity. Some friends were but it largely passed me by. I’m not sure whether I would have liked it had I been introduced to his comedy back then. In those days, there were very few comedians who made me laugh and it was only when friends kept riffing off Eddie Izzard that I discovered that comedian.

But you know, every so often a friend will post a Bill Hicks Youtube clip on Facebook and I’ll wonder whether humour now 20 years old would have appealed to a 20-year younger me. I can’t honestly call it.

Bill suffered with substance abuse and died tragically young of cancer, and it’s the abuse, rather than the comedy, that had me really interested in him. Continue reading →