Writing a series is like picking up with old friends you haven’t seen in a while and catching up with their news, it’s like going to a party and seeing everyone, but you are the only one who knows everyone’s secrets. And despite No Turning Back being book 3 in a series, there are still lots of secrets surrounding the key characters that haven’t been revealed yet…
For readers following a series, reading the next book should be like picking up with old friends too, but it’s also essential that someone totally new to the party doesn’t feel left out, that they can pick up on what’s been going on. It’s vital that a new reader can enjoy No Turning Back in its own right – they may never get to read Little Bones or In Deep Water, so each book must work as a standalone.
It’s perhaps just as well that I do know my character so well, because when I sat down to write No Turning Back in January, knowing that I had a deadline in April sometime (I didn’t check the exact date, rather foolishly) I had lots of bits of plot floating around in my head but no real story.
I knew an important part of the story was about the Dark Web, I wanted to explore how technology can let intruders into our homes, often without us realizing it; and I wanted to explore relationships and what makes people act the way they do. I had Olivier and his brother and I had Tom and Lauren, and I knew what had happened to them, but not completely WHY or HOW. I also didn’t know just how hugely other people’s stories were going to impact them, and all the secrets that would be revealed. Because even perfect families have secrets…
No Turning Back was exhilarating, the first draft was written very fast, and quite a lot of it was complete nonsense, but I had all the characters in the right places, and the timeline and geography worked out. The whole point of a first draft (as I keep telling myself) is to get the story onto the page, the second draft is for finessing it, for bringing the life and colour to it and for discovering what really happened. By the time we got to the third draft, I’d made some radical changes, including a whole new and surprising ending.
I’ve discovered some fabulous characters in this book who I hope could become series characters in their own right. I adore Anna Lockharte and her niece, and we’re going to be seeing more of Eddie Flint who was a minor character in In Deep Water. I wanted to develop Cat and O’Rourke’s relationship in this book, but also to leave them with some exciting new challenges ahead, because by the end of No Turning Back, everything has changed.
Sam Blake is a pseudonym for Vanessa Fox O'Loughlin, the founder of The Inkwell Group publishing consultancy and the hugely popular national writing resources website Writing.ie. Little Bones, her debut, was shortlisted for the Bord Gais Energy Irish Book Awards Crime Fiction Book of the Year award. Order No Turning Back at this link.
