Edge of Living came out a couple of days ago so I just wanted to share a few of my thoughts about the writing of it. I haven't blogged on here for a while but my website is currently lacking hosting and I just haven't had the time to sort it out. One more thing on the very long list of things to do.

I'm slightly envious when authors have a long and detailed answer when they're asked what inspired them to write a book. I often can't remember, or it's something quite random. Taking Love's Lead for example was inspired by a personal shopping task on The Apprentice (the British one) so out of the alternative shopping scenario that my brain conjured up, came Edgar and Zachary.

Edge of Living came from a weekend away to a friend's wedding near the South Coast. The wedding was the day after the end of a school academic year back when I was still working full-time. My friends (both teachers too) and I were therefore already exhausted. Add to that, an all-day and night wedding, too much Prosecco, and insomnia (I don't sleep well at the best of times) and they were ready to head straight back to London the next day. I decided that never having been to Eastbourne (one of the settings in the book) before and with it only being a twenty-minute train journey away, I was going to go. I didn't make it as far as Beachy Head. It's a long, long walk from the station. But at some point in thinking about the place's tragic history, and being hungover and sleep deprived, Alex was born and wouldn't go away, even though I didn't start writing the story for at least six months after that.

It's the trickiest book I've written so far, simply because I wanted to try and get it right, which meant I wrote even slower than I normally write which isn't that fast anyway -lol. It's also the first book where I haven't been able to rely on humour which comes a lot more easily to me. Even Refuge had humour in parts.
I was also aware that it's quite a departure from my usual books so I didn't want to make it too dark. Trust me I can go much darker (but I've got another pen name lined up for that eventuality. Day and Night-anyone?) should I ever decide to go truly dark, which is quite likely given some of what I read is pretty dark.

The problem with this book being quite different is that some of my usual readers may find it too dark, while new readers who haven't read my books before may find it not dark enough. Basically, you can't win, but then you could say that about any book. Also it's the first book I've written where I went through a stage where I couldn't read anything. Angsty would give me palpitations that the angst I was writing wasn't good enough. And light and humorous would put me in completely the wrong frame of mind for getting into Alex's head.

I plan eventually to work out what really did go on between Mark and Wilko, which although technically would make it part of a series, that book would have a very different feel to the first so I don't know if that still classes as a series. Hmmmm...not sure. Answers on a postcard.

Anyway, my angsty, dark(er) book is now out there and hopefully the majority of people will enjoy it.

And only a few weeks until my Christmas novella follow on to A Temporary Situation comes out which is back to light-hearted and humorous.