I’m happy to say the second Alex Hastings book is finished. Well, actually I’m overjoyed and rather relieved. I did not realise it could be harder to write a sequel – naive of me I know but I’d never done it before.

The first problem concerned serial characters. Some readers will pick up “The Drowners” first – they need to know who these people are and a bit about them. On the other hand, readers from “Death of the Elver Man” have already met Alex, Sue, Simon, Ada….. How to keep the attention of new readers without really hacking off the others?

It has been said the best way to learn about writing is to read other writers’ work so I trawled through my (now rather extensive) crime library in search of help and inspiration. I found the master of this skill, the wonderful Philip Kerr who not only has serial characters in his Bernie Gunter series, he moves them back and forth in time through their lives. Learn from the best…

More to follow, a little more regularly I promise.