The Big Bang…

It started with a bang (of sorts). A two-word concept spawned the book that is now known as ‘Raising Hell’. From that concept were born two MCs that would be our life’s breath for the twenty months of writing that followed.

Neither I nor my co-author, L.W. Rogers, were planners when we began this process but we definitely planned certain areas for this one. There is an A3 size black book that proves it. This book will be invaluable as a reference point for the future books in the series that we plan to write. Planning has definitely turned out to be a useful process in that respect.

From the moment fingers began to tap away at the keyboards, we worked closely to ensure that our characters’ plotlines didn’t conflict in the places where they interacted in any way. Although there are very few circumstances under which they meet during the first half of the story (maybe even the first two thirds), there is at least one scenario where they are in the same room as each other. This situation straddled two chapters, so we needed to ensure that the events were relayed similarly but from differing viewpoints. We think it worked out okay. Ultimately, that is not for us to decide.

Many months of work went into the editing of the book – and by many, I mean from August 2019 (when we finished the first draft) until June 2020. It has been a long process. The manuscript has gone back and forth between all those involved in editing a ridiculous amount of times. All I can say is that, for now, it is as ready as it will ever be.

Even with all the stages mentioned above, there is always more to it than that. For example, in December 2019 I had the fortune of finding the absolute talents that are David Collins of http://www.dccovercreations.com and Morgan Wright of http://www.morganwrightbooks.com and was gifted the wonderful cover and cover animations that we are now using on our social media sites. They are fantastic to work with and I hope to be working with them again in the future.

As a result of Morgan setting up another service through her website, we now have an awesome book trailer complete with custom music. This is how we were fortunate to work with Morgan and @GeeGeeMusicPro who provided the music that accompanies Morgan’s wonderful work.

Formatting began in June 2020. I was lucky. Through having completed several writing courses with a specific company, I was able to sign up for a Kindle Gold course that came in particularly useful when going through the formatting process. I learned all about bookmarks and hyperlinks, sales and marketing, keywords, etc. – the list goes on. I am grateful that I was able to learn these things beforehand as I would have struggled more otherwise.

So all that remains to be said is thank you, Mrs. Rogers, for being a great co-author and for the fun times ahead with the next book in the series. Thank you, editors and beta readers for your amazing input. And thank you to the people that put their talents into the design for the cover, animations, and trailer complete with custom music. You guys are all appreciated and I am so grateful to you all.

Now, finally, the results of all of our hard work are out there. Today, 20th June 2020, is our book spawn’s day of birth, and every minute of the journey has been worth it.