Stranger Child - Rachel Abbott - Guest Post

I'm very pleased to welcome author Rachel Abbott to the blog today! 

Rachel is the author of four novels, her new book is called Stranger Child, and she is here to tell us about the kind of research that goes into her writing. 

I've read and reviewed two of Rachel's novels so far, Only the Innocent and The Back Road, and enjoyed them both very much (click the titles to read my reviews).

A thrilling line of research

by Rachel Abbott

One of the aspects of writing that I have always thoroughly enjoyed is the research. My husband has said frequently that a police raid must be imminent as I scour the Internet to discover methods of killing people, and learn about money laundering, drug distribution and people trafficking. Fortunately I can prove – through my books – that it really has all been in the line of research.

I don’t know how writers managed before the Internet came along. I know there is much you can do in libraries, but when you are researching a thriller it’s hard to know where in any respectable library you might find out how to manufacture liquid nicotine, and where best to inject it to cause death.

When I sit down with an idea for a book, I usually start with a ‘what if?’ question. ‘What if a woman had no choice but to murder a man?’; ‘What if a man is so obsessed with his wife that he has to…’ (I’m not going to finish that sentence – it gives the game away in one of my books.)

From that initial question, I start to develop the plot. What has happened to these people to bring them to where they are now? As the ideas develop, I start to build character profiles and a timeline of events.

Even these first steps, which I believe are crucial to forming a picture in readers’ minds, require research. When I develop a character profile, I have an idea of what a character might look like. But that’s not enough. I want an actual picture so I don’t lose sight of them. I scour web images, looking for anybody – a star, a model or just somebody’s mum – that fits the bill. That image is pasted into the character profile, and I find other items to add to their portfolio – where they live, what clothes they wear, what they like to drink, and so on.

The timeline creates its own research list. In Stranger Child, Tom – the main detective in all my books – is reminiscing about his youth with older brother, Jack. I check the timeline to confirm when they were both born. What music would they have been listening to in their teens? I trawl through the charts for that year, and decide which brother would have liked which tracks.

All of this is valuable research, but for Stranger Child I had to go one step further – although I actually bottled it when it came to one part of the investigation. But I’ll come to that shortly.

In Stranger Child one character has to go into a safe deposit vault buried deep under the streets of Manchester in the middle of the night – with no light other than a head torch. For me, this would be a terrifying experience, but to make it as realistic as possible I needed to know how it might feel. So I phoned up a company (they wish to remain anonymous) and asked if I could have a tour.

Of course, I went during the day when the lights were on and it was full of people. But I stood in the centre of the room and tried to imagine I was there on my own, and it was pitch black. As it’s underground, there would be no ambient light, and the sounds from outside would be muffled.

There’s a viewing room where people take their boxes to add or remove items, and I imagined how it would feel to know that somebody might be hiding in there, waiting for me. I had to make others feel how I knew I would have felt, with an authenticity that couldn’t have been achieved without a site visit.

And now for the bit where I have to admit to being a wimp! Stranger Child references the Dark Web. For those who may not know much about the Dark Web it’s part of the Deep Web (an area of the internet that cannot be found through search engines). There are several reasons why websites and other content might legitimately not want to be accessed via search engines, but the Dark Web is the part of the Deep Web associated with the buying and selling of anything from guns and drugs to credit card details. Some use the terms Deep and Dark interchangeably, but my research suggests that there is a subtle difference. Neither, though, is readily accessible.

This was a vital part of my story, so I researched how to penetrate the Dark Web. It must be possible, or there would be no market for the illegal goods sold there! And I managed it. I actually know how to get into the Dark Web. But the truth is, I didn’t have the guts to try it.

Given the amount of attention being given to cyber crime by Europol and other agencies, for the first time since I started writing I was actually afraid of completing my research by visiting any of the sites. What if I stumbled across some seriously illegal activities? What if, entirely by mistake, I bought a gun, or found I had inadvertently bought a stack of bitcoin?

So unlike my quest for creating the realism of the vault, I relied on the fact that I knew a lot about the dark web without, thankfully, ever having visited it. And I assumed most of my readers would know no more than me.

Research for Stranger Child was fascinating, but with each book, I seem to have to delve deeper into dark worlds. So if you hear I’ve been arrested, it was all in the interests of authentic research.

About 'Stranger Child'

One Dark Secret. One act of revenge. 

When Emma Joseph met her husband David, he was a man shattered by grief. His first wife had been killed outright when her car veered off the road. Just as tragically, their six-year-old daughter mysteriously vanished from the scene of the accident. 

Now, six years later, Emma believes the painful years are behind them. She and David have built a new life together and have a beautiful baby son, Ollie. 

Then a stranger walks into their lives, and their world tilts on its axis. 

Emma’s life no longer feels secure. Does she know what really happened all those years ago? And why does she feel so frightened for herself and for her baby? 

When a desperate Emma reaches out to her old friend DCI Tom Douglas for help, she puts all their lives in jeopardy. Before long, a web of deceit is revealed that shocks both Emma and Tom to the core. 

They say you should never trust a stranger. Maybe they’re right. 

About Rachel

Rachel Abbott was born just outside Manchester, England. She spent most of her working life as the Managing Director of an interactive media company, developing software and websites for the education market. The sale of that business enabled her to take early retirement and fulfil one of her lifelong ambitions - to buy and restore a property in Italy. 

But even in Italy the winters can be cold and wet, and so Rachel decided to fill those dismal days by fulfilling another ambition - writing a psychological thriller! ONLY THE INNOCENT, her first novel, was more successful than she could ever have imagined, and it enabled her to change her life yet again, and become a full time writer. Her third novel, SLEEP TIGHT, was released on 24th February 2014 and was her third number one. Stranger Child, Rachel's latest book, was released on 24th February 2015.

Links

Web :         rachel-abbott.com

Blog:          rachelabbottwriter.com 

Twitter:     @Rachel__Abbott

Facebook: RachelAbbott1Writer

My publishing journey so far - Mark Edwards - Author Guest Post

I am delighted to share a great guest post by author Mark Edwards on the blog today.

More twists and turns than a bucketful of snakes… My publishing journey so far.

by Mark Edwards

As everyone knows, in the old days there was only one route for writers: write a book, find an agent, then hopefully a publisher. If you didn't find a publisher, that was it, unless you decided to vanity publish (ie pay someone to print your book). You could keep trying and trying…but if you never found a publisher who was willing to sign you, your writing career was dead in the water.

That's what happened to me. I spent my twenties and early thirties writing and writing. I got an agent and thought that it was going to be easy from that point on. Three or four rejected novels later my agent dumped me. Even when I started writing with Louise Voss, who already had a book deal, and one of our books was optioned by the BBC, I still couldn't get published.

So I gave up. For years I wrote nothing. I had a good job, a growing family… The constant rejection was too painful. My writing dreams were over. I'd given it my best shot and it hadn't worked out. Like so many writers before me, I never made it.

And that's the way it would have stayed… if it wasn't for Amazon and their Kindle Direct Publishing programme. I've written about this quite a lot before so will be brief for the sake of those who know my story. In 2011 Louise and I self-published our two novels on Amazon and then set about promoting the hell out of them. It was agony at first: sales were slow, but just encouraging enough to convince us it was worth continuing. After several months, we suddenly had a surge of sales (prompted by a lot of the people who'd bought the first book, Killing Cupid, buying the second, Catch Your Death, all at once). We hit No.1 and No.2 on the Kindle chart and stayed there for a month.

Within weeks we had a four-book deal with HarperCollins. The day this happened I felt hugely emotional. The amount of time and pain and hope I'd invested over the years… It felt like it had finally all paid off. Our books were going to be in shops, we were going to cross over to the non-Kindle-owning public. With a big publisher behind us, success was guaranteed!

But it didn't work out like that. Catch Your Death's bookshop sales were very disappointing (it was only in a few shops for a very short period). Then Killing Cupid came out during the worst week of the year for sales, during the Olympics, at the very height of Fifty Shades mania. By the time our first brand new book came out six months later, our publisher had effectively given up on us. All Fall Down got absolutely zero marketing, wasn't in any shops… When Forward Slash came out I don't think anyone knew it existed.

This is the problem with the old system. Have one flop and you're done. Bookshops won't stock the next one. There are no second chances.  This is why writers often have to reinvent themselves with a new name, which is something Louise and I considered. I'm glad, now, that we didn't.

In early 2013, shortly before Forward Slash was due to come out, Louise and I had an utterly depressing meeting with HarperCollins  which felt like attending your own wake. At that meeting I told them I was going to self-publish my solo novel, The Magpies. They were nice about it…but what happened next shocked everyone.

Amazon have something called White Glove, which is where you can publish via your agent. This means that Amazon help with some of the technical issues like formatting and promise a small amount of promotion. I signed up to this and self-published The Magpies at the end of March.

By promoting it to my and Louise's loyal group of Facebook followers, I managed to sell a few hundred copies in the first couple of days. This was more than All Fall Down had managed! But then it started to drop down the charts. I was despondent. If The Magpies didn't sell I was facing severe financial difficulties. When we got the HarperCollins deal I had gambled by quitting my full-time job, and had put all the money I'd saved into getting onto the housing ladder, buying a little house in Wolverhampton. I had massive debts and a baby on the way…

Then on Good Friday 2013, I checked my Magpies sales figures and saw that I'd sold a lot more copies in the last hour than usual. I checked again ten minutes later. More sales. They started pouring in. I knew that Amazon must have sent an email to people who had bought the Voss and Edwards books. By the end of the day, The Magpies was in the Top 40 on Kindle. A couple of weeks later it was in the top ten, and after hanging around at No.2 for a month it finally hit No.1.

It was incredible. This book had saved me. The Voss and Edwards books started to climb the rankings too. The Magpies kept selling. It's now sold over 200,000 copies and has reached No.1 or 2 in the UK, the US and Australia.

Then Amazon Publishing stepped in and offered me a deal for The Magpies and another book. Despite my experiences with HarperCollins, I didn't hesitate. I knew that with Amazon things would be different. They would actually make an attempt to market my books. Louise and I have also now signed with Amazon Publishing for our next one, and working with them is an absolute joy.

Of course, there's a downside. No books in shops. But our HarperCollins books were barely in any shops anyway! Amazon get a lot of bad press, but pretty much everything good that has happened to me as a writer has been because of them.

Now, I am self-publishing a new book, What You Wish For. This is the beauty of the current system. Authors can be flexible, try different things, get out books as fast as they can write them. I have no idea if this one will achieve a fraction of the success of The Magpies. But for now I am doing what I've always dreamed of, what my nineties self wanted more than anything. I am writing full-time, doing the thing I love.

A lot of rubbish is said about indie authors and the death of traditional publishing, and how one is better than the other, blah blah blah. As someone who has done a bit of everything, my feeling is that there is no 'better'. It's just that now authors have options. There is no single route. And it's as hard to be successful at self-publishing as it is working with a traditional publisher, and vice versa. The important thing is to be flexible and keep your options open. Find your own way. Don't take sides. Yes, I harbour some negative feelings about what happened with HarperCollins, but it's a bit like a divorce. At first you feel bitter, but then you get a lovely new partner and you forget all about the old one…

The important thing is to never give up. I did give up, for seven years. But trying again was the best thing I ever did.

What You Wish For - amazon link | Mark and Louise's facebook page |

Dance the Moon Down - R. L. Bartram

'Do you think they'll remember us, when we're gone?' Victoria asked. 'The next generation, I mean. What we did, what we saw, how far we've come? Or will it be just another history lesson, a story in a book?'

Dance the Moon Down is an engaging and well-researched historical portrait of one young woman's life in rural England during the Great War.

Victoria has enjoyed a comfortable middle-class life prior to the war, with her father supporting her continuing her studies, enabling her to benefit from education for longer than many women at that time. Whilst studying she makes friends with Beryl Whittacker, a staunch advocate of women's rights and independence, and she also meets the gifted poet Gerald Avery, with whom she falls in love. The two spend such happy times together, and the feelings of joy and love Victoria experiences are wonderful;

'It was to be an unforgettable year - a year of risk and excitement, of secret liaisons, the fear of discover, of reluctant partings and counting the minutes until they were together again…She was light as a feather, whilst all around her the world seemed wonderfully bright and inexpressibly beautiful. She'd never been so happy. She was so very much in love that she hardly knew where she was, except when she was with him…She felt as if she'd been only half alive before she'd met him...'

After a battle with Victoria's mother, the pair start to make a life together in the countryside. A strong love and bond grows between Victoria and Gerald prior to World War I. However as I read I was afraid as to what would happen to them when the war began. 

The tale follows Victoria's subsequent search for news of Gerald when he has gone missing in France after volunteering to fight. She is persistent and fiercely determined to discover what has happened to him, she scours the lists of the dead, she goes to London and enquires there, never giving up the hope that he is alive, just as so many other women await news of their men, whether sons, husbands, brothers, fathers; …'women, their faces tired and drawn, who were sick at heart with waiting and worrying.' Victoria is accused of being a spy and we see how this blot on her character will influence her future choices.

She returns to the countryside, to Staunton Gifford near the south coast, where she must get used to a much lower standard of living than she was once used to, and she eventually finds work, albeit hard, physical work as a farm labourer; '...Victoria understood that even though the work was backbreaking, it was still work. Without it, you didn't get paid, and if you didn't get paid, you starved. It was a part of life she'd never had to consider before.' There she makes firm friendships with some of the other women who are similarly employed, friendships that cross the social/class barriers. I won't write any further about the plot, as it is for the reader to discover further what happens to Victoria and to Gerald.

I must admit that I found the narrative perhaps a little overly descriptive at first, but then the story grew and blossomed fully to life and I was caught up in it fully, eager to see what the path ahead would hold for these characters. The author vividly conveys the determination and perseverance, and sheer hard physical work that so many did at home during the war in support of the country and of those overseas. It was brave of the author to tackle the female point of view here and he gives a fresh, compassionate and honest portrait of the lives, trials and struggles of those left behind during wartime. He has paid keen attention to detail, and the novel shows his careful research of the times and the events of this period; I felt transported back to another time. 

I really liked the portrayal of Beryl, her independence, fighting for what she believed in despite being considered a criminal, and her urging Victoria to want to make more of life and not just settle down and get married. But it felt right too, that this is what Victoria wanted, and that she could defend that choice. It was interesting to see the depiction of women trying to break free from convention but at the same time to be able to have the freedom to make their own choices either way. And Beryl is a rounded character; despite her independence and her actions as a suffragette demanding progress, she is nevertheless susceptible to romance. I admired Victoria for the way she adapted to the hand life had dealt her, and the way she was prepared to us her knowledge and abilities to help others who had had less chances in life than her thus far, whether due to lack of education or due to poverty.

R. L. Bartram has incorporated some lovely details and nice touches in his story; there was a moving incident involving a photograph in a newspaper, and a very poignant moment near to the end of the story which had me on the verge of tears. A very promising historical fiction debut that brims with romance, friendship, endurance and hope through adversity, and captures a time of great hardship and change; I'm very glad to have read this novel and the memory of the story has stayed in my mind since reading it.

Source - author review copy in exchange for an honest review

Self published via Authors Online