• Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

Ray Celestin

Ray Celestin Author Website

  • The City Blues Quartet
    • The Axeman’s Jazz
    • Dead Man’s Blues
    • The Mobster’s Lament
    • Sunset Swing
  • Galleries
    • The Axeman’s Jazz
    • Dead Man’s Blues
    • The Mobster’s Lament
    • Sunset Swing
    • Book Covers
    • Instagram
  • Playlists
  • Posts
  • Further Reading
  • Press

craft

Plotting…

I use Excel to plot my stories (something my mates all make fun of me for). In each draft of each book I mess about with the order of chapters and scenes, add and delete whole sections. ‘Dead Man’s Blues’ had seven drafts. I took screenshots of each draft’s plot as I worked it in Excel and stuck them together here to show the evolution of a plot. Each cell is a chapter and each cell is coloured according to its POV character. Not sure what happened with the 2nd draft.

Editing…

What editing looks like… I think this is from a round of edits on the 6th or 7th draft of the new book. The published version will be the 9th draft. Much of the stuff I’m cleaning up on this page ended up getting cut from the final version anyway. My process is massively inefficient.

The Mobster’s Lament Bubble Map

I opened up my sketchpad to start making a bubble map for book 4 of the quartet and found the one I did for book 3…

What research looks like

New project, new folder. Cloudland.

Primary Sidebar

Newsletter sign-up

Sign up for news about book releases, promos, and other stuff.

Join the list

Connect

Pinterest
Instagram

Recent Posts

  • Sunset Swing Shortlisted for the Gold Dagger and the Historical Dagger by the CWA
  • Newsletter – Sunset Swing – New Publication Date
  • Newsletter – August 2021
  • Newsletter – February 2021
  • ‘The Mobster’s Lament’ is one of The i Newspaper’s Books of the Year.

Pages

  • Instagram
  • Playlists
  • Posts
  • The City Blues Quartet
    • Sunset Swing
      • Gallery
      • Book Notes
      • Bibliography
      • Map
    • The Axeman’s Jazz
      • Gallery
      • Preface
      • Afterword
      • Reading Group Guide
      • Bibliography
    • Dead Man’s Blues
      • Gallery
      • Book Notes
      • Reading Group Guide
      • Bibliography
      • Map
    • The Mobster’s Lament
      • Gallery
      • Book Notes
      • Bibliography
      • Map
  • Book Covers
  • Press kit
Dead Man's Blues Review 1
Dead Man's Blues Review 4

Footer

Newsletter sign-up

Sign up for news about book releases, promos, and other stuff.

Join the list

Connect

Pinterest
Instagram

Copyright © 2023