Next in line

I am sometimes asked where do my ideas for a book come from. I usually reply by giving the example of a vegetable plot. To grow healthy, nourishing vegetables you must feed and water the ground that your vegetables are growing in. And so it is with writing, you need to feed your brain, and to do this you must read, read and keep on reading.

Quite often weeds might grow, but pulling them out allows the shoots of the vegetables to grow and flourish. Don't forget that some of the best manure comes out of the back end of a cow.

The  book cover on the left is the provisional cover for the next book I will be working on, Crichtons End.
The premise for the story is all about how life in a country village is turned on its head after electricity stops working.
It was inspired by the stage play by JM Barrie about what happens within a family, when roles are reversed.

The idea came to me one morning as I was driving to work and became stuck in a traffic jam. As I waited for traffic to resume moving I mused about what could cause electricity to stop working. I trolled through my memories of unusual facts for a feasible scenario and remembered the case back in 1859 when a solar flare wiped out most telegraph communications around the world. 

Just imagine the scenario with no electricity - no mobile phones, no GPS, no radio, no television, all bank accounts and pensions frozen. Aircraft, trains, automobiles, ships all unusable. No street lighting at night, no gas or electricity in the home. Refrigerators and freezers warming up and the food inside spoiling.

I have started writing and the more research I do into the phenomenon of solar flares and HEMP explosions, I realise just how close and devastating the end of electricity use as we know it could be.

Provisional publication date is December 2020.