Following the recent publication of my new book, Invisible, I thought I’d share where the idea came from and give a sneak peek at some of the characters.
The original idea for my latest book came from the place that most of my ideas come from: a dream. I had a dream that I was an invisible undercover police officer. I’d been turned invisible by my evil bosses who wanted to experiment with their new technology, but I’d become stuck in an invisible state. I needed to find a way back to becoming visible again.
I have a lot of dreams where I’m involved in law and order. The idea for Shape the Future, my previous novel, came from a dream I had about being recruited by a secret law enforcement group. This doesn’t come from a deep desire I have to be a police officer. I watch a lot of crime dramas on telly. I’ve always thought that’s to blame. Anyway, putting the law and order element aside, I was fascinated by the idea of someone being invisible who had to find a way back to being visible again. There was born Invisible the novel.
Love Story
So I had the seed of an idea. Now I needed to develop it. I knew I wanted it to be a love story. All of my books are love stories. I’m such a sucker for romance. For Invisible, my first thought was that my main character could meet the man of her dreams and slowly she’d come back to life. Their budding romance would bring her back to the world.
I immediately hated that idea. It was predictable and soppy, and there wasn’t enough conflict.
That’s when I turned the idea on its head. What if it wasn’t the man of her dreams that brought her back to life, but a man that she couldn’t stand? Someone who physically made her want to heave. What if she bumps into the grossest man she’s ever seen and suddenly her body is brought back to the world? What if only when she’s in this horrible man’s company she can be seen? The rest of the time she remains invisible. And then what if she falls head over heels in love with one of his mates? Now I was getting excited. I called my heroine Alice and I started to jot down some notes.
Comedy
It was at this point that I realised the book had to be a comedy. It was far too silly to be anything else. That’s when I decided to add in a third man and ramp up the complications. If I could hit Alice at every angle with both problems and delights, then I was hoping the comedy would naturally shine through. So there’s Karl, the disgusting man who Alice ends up stuck with just so she can have some semblance of a normal life. Then there’s Ethan, Karl’s incredibly sexy friend, whom Alice falls head over heels for. And finally there’s Dan, Alice’s friend from work. She gets on with him very well but they’re yet to meet.
Being Visible
Despite all the fun and romance, there is a more serious theme that runs through the book. Everything is either very invisible or very visible. We all come across it all the time – how the perception of something can be so different to the reality – and this theme is touched upon throughout. My villains in the book are the big characters that are very visible and the heroes are the ones that somehow get lost. But what are the visible ones hiding and why can’t the heroes be seen? It’s something that I hope people will be able to identify with as they read it. It’s not meant to be deep and meaningful, obviously, but I wanted the foundation of the book to be built on something real. It might be a comedy, but at the end it all comes down to perception. Do we really see what’s going on around us?
Invisible is available to buy as an ebook or paperback from Amazon. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.
