A few days ago, I bundled up over 400 pages of loose A4 paper, secured an elastic band round them and put them in an envelope to send back to my editor and publisher at Hachette. It was the proof pages of Fractured – pretty much the final version of the novel. It was an odd experience: this edit was quite quick, and there were no major changes, really just typos and a few things that hadn’t been caught in the copy edit. It felt…finished.

I had previously told myself that when I had let Fractured go, I would take a few months off writing: I’d read lots of books, get fit, relax, and prepare for publication in March – and all that entails. Then, next year, I would print out the first draft of a novel that I wrote earlier this year, and begin pruning and shaping it into my next book.

But as soon as I packed away my notes for Fractured, I felt the urge to write something new. I couldn’t wait. I bought a new, blank, notebook and already I’m jotting down snippets that could be the start of something: news stories, overheard phrases and conversations, a place, the look of a stranger. My brain is whirring and I see story ideas everywhere. I find myself formulating premises for novels, thinking about the story arc, the synopsis, the blurb. Ideas that were separate stories are starting to merge into a possible novel and I’m excited and looking forward to starting the whole process again. Perhaps it’s because I’ve spent months now in the ‘editing’ mode: being logical, methodical, detached. The other side of my brain is crying out for some action.

I won’t dismiss my already-written second novel though. I was as enthusiastic about that project at the start as I am now about a new novel, so I will go back to it and see how I feel about it. In the meantime, I will keep collecting ideas, and store them away until a new book emerges.

Writing a second novel will be hard. I’ve yet to see how Fractured will be received, but it’s a book that I thought about for years and years before writing and I suspect much of it was ‘written’ before I ever sat down at the keyboard. But I have loved every step of my journey towards publication and know without a doubt that I want to do it again.