Tomorrow (5th of January) is the official publication day for the penultimate Invisible Fiends book The Beast. I’ve decided against doing blog tours of any of that stuff for this book and will instead be posting a lot of content here on the blog that you’ll hopefully find interesting.
I’m going to start by talking about the evolution of the character of the Beast, and in doing so talk about the evolution of the Invisible Fiends series as a whole. My hope is it will not only reveal a bit about this book, but about my writing process in general.
Still, before we get to that, let’s take a look at the official blurb for the book:
Kyle is having trouble with the neighbours. They’ve turned into black-eyed, flesh-eating zombies. Now would be a good time to leave town but out there, on the snow covered streets, something far worse is lurking.
There is a beast in the shadows and the only way for Kyle to fight it is to use his powers. But every time Kyle uses them, he weakens the barrier between this world, and the terrifying, world of the Darkest Corners. If the barrier breaks there will be more killers on the streets.
And here’s the front cover to give you an idea of what the Beast itself looks like:
Quite the charmer, eh? This is the Beast’s first appearance in the Invisible Fiends series, but that wasn’t always going to be the case. In the first draft of Mr Mumbles (then called “Imaginary Friends Reunited”, or “Project IFR” to long time blog readers) there was a character with the same name who looked just as monstrous as the creature above.
That Beast arrived somewhere near the end of the book. Below you’ll find an extract taken from that first draft which shows the Beast’s first appearance. Before you read that, though, I should set the scene…
The first draft of the book that would eventually become Mr Mumbles was written over a period of about a year. I was working full time and juggling a young family (not literally, that would be dangerous and probably illegal) and dreaming that one day I might be able to call myself a writer.
I didn’t know it at the time, but the book was short. Way too short for the age group, in fact, as just under 20,000 words. The finished final draft would be 44,000 words long, but that wouldn’t happen until about a year down the line, and the full details of that process will be a story for another day.
Not only was it short, it was a bit naff in places, too. Don’t get me wrong, it had plenty of strong points, but there were a fair few clunkers of ideas in there, too. The biggest of all the duffers was the ideas that the imaginary friends could be hurt by “factual” things. Because they were imaginary – or fictional – anything containing factual information was like Kryptonite to them. At one point in the story Kyle fashioned himself a shield using pages from a dictionary, while swiping at Mr Mumbles with a rolled up world map. As you’ll see in the extract below, he also used his birth certificate to somewhat devastating effect.
And I think the point I’m trying to make – if there is one – is that it’s OK to write some naff bits in your book. As I always say, a first draft doesn’t have to be right, it has to be written. I’ve spoken about that in a bit more detail in this post (warning: contains sandwiches). The first draft of Mr Mumbles was far from perfect. It took another year to get it as close to perfect as I was able to get it, and then the time came for me to leave it alone and move on to book 2.
With unlimited time I would almost certainly have edited and tinkered forever more, but I had to leave it be and let it stand on its own two feet and do you know what? I’m damn proud of it. I’m proud of the nightmares it has given people. I’m proud of the emails I’ve received from parents and teachers telling me ol’ Mumbles turned a previously reluctant reader on to the joy of books. I’m also proud I gave one kid a raging phobia of hats and, presumably, people who wear them.
The final draft of Mr Mumbles was many times stronger than the draft the extract comes from. I like to think that’s because I improved as a writer while working on it, and I hope I’ve continued to improve since then. As I say in my workshops, writing is exactly like anything else in this world – the more you do it, the better you get. If you’ve pitched a book recently and had a rejection, don’t be disheartened. Understand that it means you’re one step closer to being published. The next book you write will be better. The one after that, better still. If you truly want it, you won’t give up – you’ll never give up – and all the practice will pay off in the end.
Anyway, The Beast, then. Um… it’s a big monster thing and it sort of always ways, so I don’t suppose it has really evolved at all. Apologies for the vastly misleading blog title. It was in the first draft, I took it out, but realised it would lend itself to a story much later in the series. So that’s what I did. Did I mention it’s out tomorrow?
Here’s that extract I promised. Enjoy.