Hello, welcome along to a brand new episode of writer's routine.

This week we're chatting to James Alistair Henry, a writer across telly who has made the plunge into novels.

Just published Pagans, a story set in an alternative Britain threatened with political turmoil.

You can hear about how writing sitcoms has influenced his ability to get on with novels.

Also, what he's learned from getting the first book done as he moves on to his second.

More through luck and judgment, I just about got the balance right with the first one.

So the temptation is to go and try and be clever in the second one.

So no, I think I need to sort of just try and keep that same balance that they've got and see how that works.

So I'm going to use roughly the same sort of same system I use to structure it.

I just kind of stick with that and just kind of do it pretty much the same way and not try

not to, you know, try not to get too clever with it, I think. Because there's certain, there's

kind of books where you just, you can see the author getting really pleased with themselves

by book two or three. And they just

sort of, you go, no, I just want to, I like that first one, just do more of the first one. So I

kind of want to do that. And we run through why one of his main motivations in moving to novels

was just the joy of finishing something. And that was kind of the thing anyway, there was a lot

of television, you never get to finish everything.

You're always developing projects that fall.

You know, every time you see a scriptwriter's credits, there'll be 10 times as much stuff that it's been developed, but it's never gone anywhere. And part of the reason I wanted to write his book, I just want to finish something. Just get something solid that's done. and they haven't had to ask permission for a producer to develop every stage of it.

I haven't had to justify every plot twist.

I've just sat down

and written something and it's all me. It's all on the way with James Alistair Henry in a

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