So, About Book Two…

Phantom Signals has only been out for a little over a week, which means I’m still getting used to the slightly peculiar idea that complete strangers are actually reading it, and thankfully loving the characters and world I somehow magicked on the 07:20 to Waterloo. (Where I am writing this blog post now!)

However, what’s even more peculiar is that many of them have already started asking for the next one.

One reader told me they’d binged the book in almost one sitting and “can’t wait for book two”. Another finished their review with, “no spoilers but I need answers!!” Someone else said that when they reached the end, they wanted to carry straight on into the next book, even though it isn’t out yet.

Firstly, thank you. Genuinely.

When you spend a very long time writing something on trains, in coffee shops and wherever else you can open a laptop without attracting too much suspicion, discovering that somebody has finished it and immediately wants more is rather lovely.

It does, however, raise the obvious question.

When is Book Two coming?

I’m not giving you a date yet. I’ve worked in IT for far too long to announce a delivery date that drifts right faster than Stephen’s idea of a quiet life.

But thankfully, I do have a head start.

The 150,000-word problem

Code & Stone was always intended to be a series. What I hadn’t intended was for the original plotted and drafted version of the first part of that story to wander past 150,000 words.

For a debut novel about an exhausted IT contractor discovering that bits of London aren’t working quite as intended, this seemed… excessive.

So I made the fairly sensible decision to split it.

That wasn’t simply a matter of finding the middle of the manuscript, pressing Ctrl+X and calling the second document Book Two. Phantom Signals still needed to work as a complete novel, with its own story and its own ending. That meant restructuring, rewriting and moving quite a lot around. Some ideas disappeared entirely, others grew, and several characters became considerably more/less important than I’d originally planned.

Eventually, Phantom Signals became the book that’s out there now.

What it also left me with was the beginning of Network Rising.

So what does that mean for Book Two?

Not a finished second novel, sadly. I’d quite like to tell you there’s a polished manuscript sitting on my laptop waiting for a spellcheck and an ominous cover, but there isn’t. There is, however, an existing plot, scenes, characters and quite a lot of material from that original 150,000-word version to work with.

Some of it will survive. Some of it is already changing. And there are a few places where Past Me is going to require a quiet word with now me about what I was thinking.

But I’m not starting from a blinking cursor and wondering what unfortunate thing I can do to Stephen next.

You see, I already know.

So, for everyone who has finished Phantom Signals and asked what happens next, thank you.

You will be pleased to know that, yes, there is a next.

And the network is already rising.

Want to know when Book Two is getting closer?
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