I'm busy working on my serial story for eharlequin and hit the half way point yesterday. More news on that soon. While I'm busy with that, I thought I'd post an article about my recent publication, INESCAPABLE. This article is about the inspiration for the book, and was originally written for the Total-E-Bound newsletter.
INESCAPABLE INSPIRATION
When an author is interviewed you can almost guarantee that one of the questions will be “Where do you get your inspiration?” Mostly, for me, it’s hard to say, exactly. Ideas can be stimulated by anything from current affairs to life experience, from music to a snippet of an overhead conversation. Frequently, ideas pop out of absolutely nowhere—the subconscious is always busy on our behalf. Once I've got a concept on the go I can then ask myself “What if?” to grow the idea into a fully formed plot.
My recent Total-E-Bound novel, INESCAPABLE, has a bit of a different history, however. It is the one book that was directly inspired by a film, and that’s because the film didn’t go where I thought it might have. That film is NARROW MARGIN, starring Anne Archer and Gene Hackman.
In the film, the protagonist goes on a blind date and witnesses her date being killed by the mob. She escapes, then a police officer rescues her and they flee, with the bad guys on their tail. The majority of the film is set on the run and on an express train with the hero and heroine in close proximity. Great film, absolutely loved the story! Their bond wasn’t explored as much as I would have liked, though. It was there, but I kept longing for more and it didn't happen. Yeah, yeah, I know. It was an action movie, a suspense, not a relationship story or a romantic suspense, but I still hankered for more of the bond. I think I might even have sulked about it!
The story stayed in my mind for a long while afterwards and I began to think about writing something that went in a completely different direction. My own witness protection story began to evolve.
The angle that particularly appealed to me about the film was that she was on her way to a blind date and ends up in a crime scene. Subsequently she is with a different man, a man who becomes her guardian. But I wondered…what if…what if the original date wasn’t killed, and he was in witness protection with her? That might be intense…and what if her blind date knew a lot about her—her intimate desires, her sexual fantasies—because they’d been having a tell-all online affair? She would then be in witness protection with her virtual lover, and a totally alpha witness protection officer—both of whom she is attracted to. Oh yes, I was up and running! Not only that, but as soon as the story blossomed into a ménage à trois story, I absolutely had to write it. INESCAPABLE is the result.
I set the story in Wales, in a part of the country I love, Conwy. The trio are isolated in a country hotel that is closed up for the winter. This story is a romantic suspense and it’s all about the three-way relationship–the conflict, the desire, the passion and emotion that grows between the characters. Inevitably, the bad guy isn’t far behind, and he wants those witnesses out of the picture…
I had enormous fun writing this story and if you pick it up, I hope you enjoy it.
You can read an excerpt here.
You can download the book here.
