Writing Progress Log : W/E 11th September 2026

The week started off less than ideal. After the previous bank holiday weekend visiting family in the North East of England, we suffered the usual consequences of spending with our nieces and nephews and their runny noses. We were all feeling a little under the weather with colds. Productivity was slow at the start of the week, but later in the week we felt much better and were productive.

We drafted chapters 23 and 24 for The Bookshop Mysteries 7 - A Ring of Roses, totaling 3631 words. We are at an important juncture of the story and we have a few routes we could take with the plotline. All of them are interesting angles to take, so next week we need to figure out the direction we want to take. Our planned finale doesn’t change, but we have options to get to that point.

For MMS Book 2, we also drafted a couple of chapters: 3 and 4. This totalled 3,365 words. We are still early in this book’s development, but we should have a dead body in the next three chapters. The way the first murder happens is quite interesting and required a lot of research, but it’s quite a unique crime.

So, even though we were ill this week, we still got 6,996 words drafted, which isn’t bad. Next week is more of the same and pushing both books forward.

Now that MMS Book 1 has been submitted to our publisher, we are waiting for the first set of developmental edit notes, and they have indicated that will be about two weeks. Looking forward to seeing what they say.