You have absolutely no idea what I’ve been through to try and bring Androux book 2 into reality. To put it into context, book 1 was almost entirely finished after about 3-4 months; book 2 has taken roughly a year and still isn’t finished, not will it ever be. Yes that’s right, I’ve finally made the decision to pull the plug on Androux.
Let’s go back to the beginning – book 2 started with a lot of enthusiasm and ambition, but it would gradually dissipate over time. The first hurdle was trying to get the damn thing to even make sense; I like to think that the ‘plot’ of the first Androux book is pretty straight forward, whilst book 2 deals with multiple complex storylines running in tandem. This proved tricky as I don’t think either of us were prepared to take on such a task, as it involved significantly more planning and checking to see if there weren’t any plot-holes. This would inevitably lead to the downfall of book two, as it would run against the philosophy we originally had when we started out the Androux project together, which was to keep it improvisational and to not overthink things.
The final nail in the coffin came when a few volumes into book 2, Alex decided to bail from the project. She cited a lack of interest and a desire to work on more serious projects for doing so, which is understandable, but it came as quite a blow as we had already put a large amount of work into it. I almost pulled the plug on book 2 there and then, but I actually decided to soldier on by myself for a few months. Alex’s departure from the project also meant that neither book 1 or 2 will ever see the light of day as audiobooks, as they were originally intended to be. Despite this, I decided to continue with the Androux story in an entirely text-based format.
My main reasoning trying to finish Androux was because I simply HAD to see it done; I had sunk so much time and effort into it, that I wanted to complete it mostly out of obligation, but after writing several volumes solo, I decided that the project would be far too much for one person to take on. Fun fact: Androux was going to be a trilogy – book 2 ended up being so long that I decided to split it into two parts, the second part of which would’ve been book 3. It was this knowledge that killed my enthusiasm to keep working on Androux, because the idea of having to write ANOTHER sequel to complete the story just became too daunting. The interesting thing is, that when I decided that I would no longer be continuing the project, book 2 was not actually too far off completion, it’s just that it relied heavily of being followed up by another book and I just didn’t have the energy to do that anymore.
I’m glad that I did try to stick out book 2 for as long as I did, because I’ve learned a lot from the experience. I’m genuinely quite proud of some of the stuff I’ve written for book 2 and it’s made me much more confident as a writer. I’m sure it would’ve been pretty neat if I had finished at and gone onto write book 3, but the project just kept getting in the way of other things I wanted to work on. I leave you now with what I have completed on book 2, to give you a glimpse of what might’ve been. I hope you enjoy.