W.I.P. Wednesday - 14th March

Photos courtesy of author

Today I welcome back Carol K Carr, author of the exciting  India Black series

Thank you, Carol, for inviting me to return to your blog and share a few words about my writing projects.  My editor at Berkley Prime Crime has accepted the third manuscript in the India Black series which, after some discussion, is now called India Black and the Shadows of Anarchy.  The next step is the dreaded copy-editing process; dreaded by me, that is, as by this stage I am generally sick of my manuscript and can’t bear the thought of reading it again.  Unfortunately, that’s not an option, so soon I will be reading the thing for the umpteenth time and finding a lot of things I’d prefer to change only it’s too late to do so.

Beyond putting the final touches on India #3, I’m at work on India #4.  It’s early stages yet, but I’ve found a situation occurring in 1877 (where India #3 left off) which is rife with possibilities for espionage and humor.  I’m reading background material now, and starting to think about how my characters will get involved in this situation and what they’ll be doing.  I left myself with a romantic cliffhanger at the end of #3 (can’t say any more about that without letting the cat out of the proverbial bag) and I’ve been pondering how to move on from that point.  Yes, it would have made more sense to think that out in advance before dropping little bombshells throughout #3, but I didn’t and now I find myself staring at the computer screen and chewing my lip.

For the first time since starting the India Black series, I’m also at work on a second project.  For the past year I’ve been reading extensively about the female spies of World War II.  So far I’ve come up with a protagonist (who started life as an academic but has morphed into a journalist) who’ll be assigned to Northern Africa at the start of the American campaign there.  I’d originally planned to set the book in Washington, D.C., and feature the competing interests of British and American intelligence agencies, but after much reading determined that that subject just didn’t have oomph.  I needed a setting where the stakes were enormous, and success or failure would have major repercussions for the Allied war effort.  So we’re moving to Egypt, Libya and Tunisia with wily British and American agents ostensibly working to the same end while trying to protect their own interests while Arab nationalists, Vichy French traitors and Nazi spies skulk about causing no end of trouble.

That’s what I’ve been up to since the publication of India Black and the Widow of Windsor in January.  It’s going to be a busy year, with the new book coming out and two writing projects on the table.  I’ll be updating my progress on my blog, which you can find here, or you can visit my website at www.carolkcarr.com.