The Inspiration Behind the Books!
If you’ve ever wanted to know where I got the idea for DCI Kett and his cases, then look no further. On this page I talk about those first few moments of inspiration, and the process I go through to come up with ideas for new books. I’ll be adding to it as I write each piece, so apologies if there’s not much here yet!
Paper Girls
This is not the actual newspaper girl!
I still remember the exact moment the plot of Paper Girls jumped into my head. I was walking home from town one afternoon (I live a fifteen-minute walk from Norwich City Centre), and as I was making my way down my street I spotted the newspaper delivery girl a few houses in front of me. She was delivering the free paper, which goes to every house, and she looked like she was struggling with the weight of her bag.
I watched her walk through the gate of a house that was undergoing a renovation. The garden was a mess, there was scaffolding up, and the front door was open even though it didn’t look like anyone was home. I had a sudden vision of the girl reaching the door and it suddenly flying open, somebody grabbing her arm and dragging her inside. There were so few people around that somebody could have kidnapped her and nobody would have seen it. Terrifying!
Needless to say, that didn’t happen. But by the time I’d reached my house—literally a minute later—I had the title for a new book: Paper Girls. The entire story seemed to jump into my head, and I frantically wrote it down in the notes app on my phone before I could forget it (I have a terrible memory). Up until now I’d only really written children’s books, and at first I wondered whether the book should be something gentle—a cosy crime, maybe.
Barry and I (as well as Dave Gatward) go back years to the days when we all wrote children’s books!
Then I spoke to one of my best friends, Barry Hutchison—otherwise known as JD Kirk—and he thought it would be better as a gritty, violent, funny crime thriller. And he was absolutely right!
I’d already had a few conversations with Barry about writing crime, because a few weeks prior to this I’d had an idea for a fictional detective. I didn’t know much about him, all I really knew was that he had three daughters, the same age as mine. He was also, for a reason I didn’t know yet, a single dad. My three girls are a constant source of inspiration, they’re always doing and saying hilarious things, and I wanted to get some of them in a book. But they’re also strangely insightful in the way that kids often are, they look at things a different way, they ask different questions, they see different truths, and I thought that a story where the kids help their detective dad solve a crime might be quite good fun.
I have lived in Norwich my whole life (I’m not terribly adventurous), so had plenty of familiar locations to throw into the story. The newsagent’s where Kett meets Mike and Brandon Walker is the place I used to grab lunch on the way home from university (I studied at the University of East Anglia), and the house in the final showdown is literally down the hill from where my Dad lives.
My original cover for Paper Girls.
So I put the two ideas together, sat down, and furiously wrote for three weeks straight until I had the first draft of Paper Girls! I sent it to my Mum, who reads all my books and who loves a good crime novel, and she really enjoyed it, and I sent it to my Dad and my sister too. But in all honesty, I didn’t think anyone else would like it! I didn’t want to send it to my agent, because I didn’t think it was commercial enough, so I decided to publish it myself on Amazon. I even did the cover myself! I expected a couple of people to buy it (including my Mum), but to my immense surprise, and relief, people seemed to really like it!
So I started work on Bad Dog, and never looked back! :-)