Who would have thought it? Just over a year ago I decided to start writing a crime thriller series and here I am with 3 books out, the 4th almost ready (out on 7th May) and 25,000 words into the 5th (that's about a third). Oh, and a short story prequel too.
My idea was simple and only had two elements:
(1) Make it different from most by having an ex-DCI rather than a serving police officer
(2) Put the poor guy in a company like the one I used to work for: a boring (and for that read extremely boring) business outsourcing company.
And so Luke Sackville was born.
He joined Filchers thinking he'd be Head of Security and was landed with being Head of Ethics, thrown four team members and off he went. I've never heard of anyone being a Head of Ethics but hey.
As for the other characters - his team, his boss, the Head of Security, and so on - well they just happened. When it comes to writing I'm definitely a pantser, and I find that approach very helpful when it comes to characters (I never expected Josh to be in it until he appeared for example) and also to twists. If I've got halfway through writing and I don't know who the murderer is then the reader's not going to know either, are they?
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