'What's left of his skin.' That's an excellent turn of phrase, for some reason really weirds me out. Okay so you have lots of hypothetical discussions about Person A did it, yeah but what about Person B etc

I've written three novels. The first, a British political satire, I'm going to self publish next year after querying it in 2025. When not working on a novel I like pumping out silly short stories but at the moment I've been taken with one that's become a serial I'm doing on substack. Quite fun just pantsing a new chapter out of nowhere every day.

This is great. Would read more. My only thing was the brackets. Could you just say, 'My sister and I are the only two surviving children of eight or nine, I've lost count.' Very cool though!

Hi James - I've been writing full time for about a year, so this has been a big question for me as I figure out what works and what doesn't. When I'm writing a longer form project, I find I can't write anything else. So if I write that day (and I try to write every day when doing a book) then it will be about 2k words on that. I can't do short stories or anything else if in the middle of a proper draft. That said, I've found I can do some editing and revision of other books. The biggest issue I've found is that if I've got Book A in third person voice, then editing Book B that's first person in the same day causes me a big headache, takes a while to get my head back into shape. Right now, I'm letting a new book cool before revising, so I'm just attacking random short stories each day when I write. Hope that helps - what about you?

@Issy McCann Yep agree. Slightly re-worked. Will keep on with it. When a cure for IBS mutates into a zombie apocalypse, sheltered Tom Nowak must fight through the terror he helped unleash and start living, even if it kills him.

@Juno Baker Hey Juno! Thanks, I wrote it at a time that IBS was absolutely ruining my life! So he's a stay at home man-child who barely ever leaves his house/bubble, so thats the thought behind it being there. Do you think it should go?

I notice a lot of novels like to dip between generations or decades. Sometimes same character, sometimes different. But the idea of seeing society at different points through different lenses seems prevalent.