Finally, the day has come. After 124 hours of writing, two editorial passes, and the tender ministrations of three separate proofreaders, The Girl in the Wilderness is now available on Kindle.
This is a book I hadn’t really planned on writing. The nugget of the idea came about when author Chris Pourteau asked me whether I was planning any sequels to The Girl in the City. I had a vague idea that I could continue Leah’s story, and said that I might – eventually. He promptly asked for the titles of the sequels, and I came up with The Girl in the Wilderness and The Girl in the Machine. I still don’t actually know why he wanted the titles, but I filed them away and didn’t think too much about it.
Until, that is, the beginning of this year. I’d been working on my zombie series for quite a while and was starting to get a bit burned out. Looking around for something I could work on as a palate cleanser, I remembered those two titles. Several of the reviews of The Girl in the City mention they’d like to read more about my hero, Leah, and people were asking me whether I was planning sequels. I decided that writing a couple more novellas to create a trilogy would be the perfect way to have a short break from the zombie novels.
The idea was to make them about 25,000 words long – about 50% longer than The Girl in the City. That would make the whole trilogy around 70,000 words which is novel length. Perfect.
It didn’t work out that way. I outlined both books, got very enthusiastic about the story and The Girl in the Wilderness ended up at around 48,000 words. Oh well, that’s the way it is sometimes, and the story I wanted to tell needed that space.
For a limited time, The Girl in the Wilderness is available for 99c/99p (or the lowest price I can set in other countries). I’ll be putting it up to $2.99 in a couple of weeks.
And, if you haven’t started the trilogy yet, The Girl in the City is FREE until October 8th.
Both of the books are exclusive to Kindle at the moment so if you’re in Kindle Unlimited you can read them both for nothing!
Now The Girl in the Wilderness is done, I’m working on the third and final book, The Girl in the Machine. Of course I’ve blasted past the 25,000 mark again. This time I’m on track to making that single book over 70,000 words.
That extra length means extra time, so I’m now behind on my plans for the zombie series, but I’m committed to wrapping up this series before I go back to them. My current goal is to get The Girl in the Machine out before the end of the year, probably towards the end of November. I already have the cover and it looks fantastic and the story is shaping up very well. I can’t wait to share it with you all.
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[Out Now – The Girl in the Wilderness by Philip Harris first appeared on Solitary Mindset on 4th October 2016]