Author Sam Blake with some invaluable advice for our readers and writers as we face into the new year of 2026 . . .
Greetings from Dublin, and a very warm welcome to Writing.ie – thank you for visiting! I set up this site because I needed to learn how to write and how the publishing industry worked – because I had a dream of being a bestselling author. It took me five books to get published but that first book Little Bones was a runaway bestseller, staying at No 1 for four weeks and in the top ten for another four weeks. I’ve been blessed that all my adult thrillers have been top 10 bestsellers since then – but you’re only as good as your last book. I have one publishing today on 1st January, my eleventh book, Your Every Move, and I don’t take anything for granted.
As well as Writing.ie, I run an online writers coaching and mentoring group called Writers Ink (when I decided to set one up with my partner Maria McHale, a mindset and business coach, I didn’t really have any idea how successful it would be – had I thought about it, I might have come up with a more original name!! Our Inkers though have become a real community now, so we won’t be changing it!)
Every Tuesday, I write a column for the Inkers called Tuesday Tips, which is as much a diary of where I am in the writing cycle and the issues that come with that, as it is about tips, but I thought, as we open a new year, the Tuesday Tips that I’m writing for them, could be useful to you.
Your Every Move: out on New Year’s Day
With Your Every Move out on 1st January I’m focusing on launch stuff – and while I love this early January slot for many reasons, it’s also a bit of a blight because I end up working when everyone else is on holiday. I’ve partially solved that by signing tip-in sheets for this book, so 3000 copies of Your Every Move will be going into the shops signed – that’s obviously not all of them, but will mean that signed copies can go to places that I wouldn’t normally get to, and I’ve used a range of coloured pens, so look out for them!
While I’ve been getting ready for launch, I’ve been working on the edits for the next book (Jan 2027) which is called 15 Kill Lane (that might be a secret, I’ve never really done the title reveal thing, but do tend to keep them quiet just in case someone wants to – I’ll probably be in trouble now). So, my Tuesday Tips for the Inkers are about the editorial process, one that I have developed over many years listening to and interviewing bestselling authors, taking bits of what they do that and melding them to create something that works for me. Creativity is unique, developing your own process is key.
Drafts and Redrafts
Most of my first drafts would be redrafted around four times before they go to my agent Simon Trewin who will feed in his thoughts, and then that draft goes to my editor at Corvus in London. James (my editor) has sent back his thoughts in a covering letter detailing the bits that need attention, and now I’m going through all his points – I need to add some extra chapters from one point of view, so as I’m going through his comments, I’m making notes. When I’ve got to the end, I’ll start back at the beginning on a more substantial edit adding any new bits.
Because this book is multiple POV, like my others, I’ll need to make a chapter list to see whose chapter is whose, and that’ll enable me to see where to slot in the new chapters. Their position will obviously have an impact on what goes into them, so there’s no point in me writing them until I know that. The draft is 80k words so I have room to add more – my chapters are all around 1000 words, and we won’t need more than 6 new ones, probably 4 will do the job.
When I start reading from the beginning again, I’ll be principally reading for plot, but I’ll also be tightening up sentences and dialogue and making sure that the descriptions are clear. I’ll go through it twice, and then print it off and do it all again, so the final draft is really polished.
Print out your books!
As I’m sure many of you know, printing off your books is ABSOLUTELY CRUCIAL to show what you can’t see on the screen. When we read on the screen, our brain adds in the bits we think should be there. In the printed version you’ll discover there are whole words missing as well as punctuation issues. If you’ve been using tracked changes to edit, the screen you’ve been seeing has been a sea of red, so going back over the book with ‘no mark-up’ will show you where you’ve ended up with double commas and weird gaps as well as words that have run together.
For anyone wondering what tracked changes is, it’s the tool that editors use to mark up your text – if you open Word and go along to the REVIEW tab on the tool bar you’ll see several drop down options that allow you to see ‘all markup’ / ‘no mark-up’ etc – this is also where your editor adds comments to a text so that they will appear in the balloons at the side of the page (those are the comments that I’m working through now). Each sweep of changes by a different person goes into the document in a different colour – yours will be red, but as editors work on it, theirs will appear first in blue and then in purple so the history of the changes can be tracked back.
You can accept or reject the changes, and reply to the comments – overwhelmingly my replies are ‘good point’ at the moment (where my editor has spotted an inconsistency!!)
Once the substantial plot edits are done, the copy editor will step in and do a line edit, so a fresh set of eyes will check everything, and when I’ve read over and agreed those, then it will go for a proof read.
Inkers Tips for the New Year
These are the tips for the Inkers this week, which I hope will be useful for some of you:
- Your first draft will be very shaky, expect it to be awful! Every pass you make over a book improves it. Your aim as a debut author is to get it (when everything’s done) as polished as possible, so these multiple passes will hold you in good stead.
- Getting the right balance between dialogue, description etc comes with practice – and reading loads so it becomes second nature (you’re learning as you’re reading). There’s no magic formula, every book is different.
- Just keep writing is the best advice I was ever given! Remember it took me four books before I came up with the idea for Little Bones, and had the technical knowledge to be able to carry it off.
- Every word you write makes you a better writer, once you’ve got the writing thing nailed, and really found your own voice, then you can focus on plot and structure. You’ll know when you’ve got to that point, it’s like changing gear.
- To break into the debut market, your book needs to be ‘original and fresh’, it has to come at the story from a new angle with a new voice. It needs to be YOUR book.
According to the Chinese, whose wisdom has held true for centuries, 2026 is the start of a new nine year cycle, a cycle of change. 2025 was the year of the Snake when we shed the old ready to move onto the new, so the timing is perfect. That doesn’t mean that you have to rush anything – you have the luxury of time as an unpublished writer (once you get into contract you suddenly find that somehow you’re working on different elements of three books at once, sometimes it feels like waves converging) – so most importantly ENJOY THE PROCESS.
Wishing you the best of luck for 2026, happy writing.
© Sam Blake
P.S. delete the exclamation marks, you only need one or maybe two per book, listen to Elmore Leonard 😊
About Your Every Move by Sam Blake:
YOU THINK YOU’RE SAFE. BUT SOMEBODY’S WATCHING…
Irish estate agent Rosie Kinsella loves her job selling high-end properties in London. But when she’s targeted by a mysterious stalker her amazing life is turned upside down.
Who is ‘Michael’, and why does he seem to think he and Rosie are in relationship? How does he know where she lives and where she works? And how has he managed to take photos inside her house?
Rosie’s colleagues and friends rally round to protect her. But who can she really trust?
Order your copy online here.
And read more from Sam Blake on Writing.ie here.
