My last book was finished, as far as I was concerned, and
while I awaited contacts from editors about rewrites I was surfing aimlessly
and found an article on GLOBAL WARMING. The article included maps showing me
the destruction that would occur to the world if the sea level rose by seven
metres. I realized that the town where I live would be severely damaged by
that, but cleverly the article said I could change the depth of sea level rise.
When I set it at 4 metres and looked at the new East Anglia, the idea for a new
book leapt out of the screen. At about
the same time, I was also watching the Brexit negotiations with increasing
disbelief. Even the most Europhobic Racist who hates every "frog, sprout,
clog and kraut"*, surely could not have wanted the current chaos. So,
triggered by the map and Brexit, the new book started.
A couple of years
before I had written a standalone novel called 50 Miles from Anywhere, and in
the first chapter of that book I had a girl gang-raped and the poor soul spent
the rest of the book in ICU. Unlike many authors I feel a serious affinity for
the characters who have appeared in my head, and I felt really guilty towards
Steph, and knew that I owed her one. The cast of the new book produced half a
dozen other characters from that first very different book, and I asked myself
where might they be twenty years later. Steph had been to university and law
school, and had come back to her home town. Siobhan, the perky Irish Uniformed
PC who was Steph’s family worker in the first book, had risen in the police
ranks and was now the police chief in a border town, and Adelina, the
gangster’s popsy in the first book, had moved on to being his moll, then his
wife, and when Uncle Lev died she became the new Boss.
The major
difference in the feel of this book, North Sea Rising, is that heroine is
Steph, and she is the ‘I’ and the narrative voice. I had never done that
before. I may not be the first male author who has used the conceit of writing
a 1st person singular female, but it’s the first time I’ve done it, apart from
writing female characters in dramas and sketches in the 70s and 80s.
The plot is set in an Anglia that has separated from the
rest of an England that is politically collapsing, and looking at the map it is
blindingly obvious why that happened. The first 2 bits of the UK to go after
Brexit, were Scotland, whose second referendum for independence was successful.
At the same time while Scotland was dehiscing, Northern Ireland decided that
they would be better off being linked with a popular Eire, rather than an
England with whom nobody even wanted to talk. Over the next ten years, Wales,
Wessex, and Anglia followed…. And twenty years from now that is the scenario
for North Sea Rising…
*I think the owners of that phrase are Stiff Records!
Thank you so much for supporting the Blog Tour Pam x
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