Hidden – Emma Kavanagh Blog Tour

I am delighted to have the chance to host the latest leg of the blog tour for Emma Kavanagh’s “Hidden”.  Emma has a favourite question that she asks of other authors and is sharing this with us today:

HE’S WATCHING

A gunman is stalking the wards of a local hospital. He’s unidentified and dangerous, and has to be located. Urgently.

Police Firearms Officer Aden McCarthy is tasked with tracking him down. Still troubled by the shooting of a schoolboy, Aden is determined to make amends by finding the gunman – before it’s too late.

SHE’S WAITING

 To psychologist Imogen, hospital should be a place of healing and safety – both for her, and her young niece who’s been recently admitted. She’s heard about the gunman, but he has little to do with her. Or has he?

As time ticks down, no one knows who the gunman’s next target will be. But he’s there. Hiding in plain sight. Far closer than anyone thinks…

 

Emma Kavanagh: My Favourite Writing Question

One of my absolute favourite things to do as an author is attend literary festivals and conferences. Writing is a pretty isolating career, and so events like this offer a fantastic opportunity to get to know others in the same business. We get to celebrate together, commiserate together, drink together…what? who? I didn’t say that.

Anyway.

I have a question I ask all authors I meet – in appropriate forums, I mean. I don’t tend to jump out at them from behind bushes in order to fling it at them.

Are you a plotter or a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pantser?

So, I’m going to answer my own favourite question. Just for you. Aren’t you lucky?

I am a plotter. I am so much of a plotter that sometimes I begin to worry that I have some kind of problem. I begin my writing with the kernel of an idea, a rough notion of characters, a general arc of where I think the story is going to go, what the ending will be. Then I do my research, delving as deeply as I can into the world into which I am entering.

Then, I plot!

This is not something I take lightly. I have a spreadsheet and everything. (Actually, I have several, but lets not dwell on that too much, eh?)

I then draft out the novel, chapter by chapter. This is all well and good for the first dozen or so chapters, these are often pretty easy to foresee. After that, though, things get murkier, and I often can’t really tell what each chapter will look like until I get closer. My timeline shifts constantly and often doesn’t take its true shape until I am nearing the end of the first draft. Even then, sometimes the editing process means that chapters will move, be added or sometimes lost.

My plotting doesn’t always work. Sometimes I have to change course. But, having attempted to be a pantser, I have discovered I simply am not cool enough.

Spreadsheets it is then.

 

Hidden will be published on 23rd April 2015 by Century.

You can read an extract from Chapter One here: http://www.deadgoodbooks.co.uk/index.php/extract-hidden-emma-kavanagh/