Want To See The Characters?

I’ve just finished clearing my planning wall, so my office is now looking bare after months of having Kim Jong Un and Leonard Rossiter staring haughtily down at me. Before I cleared it up I took some photos of the different characters and thought I might share them with you, to give you a flavour of who is who in B of the Bang.

First up, it’s Bradford Alderman VIIII (Yes, I know that’s not how Roman numerals work, but does he?), Scion of the Alderman Retail Group. As you can probably tell the main driving force behind Bradford was creating a diminuitive figure who you really, really, really wanted to punch in the face. I’m offering no editorial on the personalities photographed below, but they all gave me that vibe. The big teeth guy especially.

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Next up is Coco. I used AI quite a lot to try and get someone who matched the image I had in my head and it was really useful for that. To be fair though, I never really spent much time imagining Coco, because in my head she always just looked like a foam lobster.

Greg. Greg Terde. Again I was back on the AI to try and generate the omnishambles that is Greg. I also felt like he had some of the Sir Les Patterson energy and then halfway through writing I realised that all along I was thinking of Bernard Black from Black Books and so he became the touchstone for Greg, harbinger of the apocalypse.

Did I spend rather too long googling images of strong redheaded women? That’s for me and Google to know and you to find out. Anyway, Jenny is described as a 5’7” scowl and in my head she often had a Scouse accent but I tried not to write it like that because writing in accents often just ends up annoying people. That said, I did get a Scots accent in just because I love writing in Scots. Heid! That’s funny.

Next up: Lally. No secret here really, she’s an amalgam of Beatrice and Eugenie. I sometimes feel like B/E are harshly done by. Imagine your entire life, never being able to escape your family? Sounds like a nightmare to me.

Ha! This is the only research I ever did for Margaret. I don’t know who the lady is as I just screenshot the picture off Google and never bookmarked it. I’d have loved to find more photos of her as she radiates good energy and that’s how I think of Margaret. Plus she was in a church, which is on brand for Margaret.

William McCartney. I love Leonard Rossiter’s face. He’s simultaneously pitiful, risible but also quietly magnificent.

Finally - I thought you might like to see some of the underground research I did. I have two very specific people to thank here for knowing more about the underground network than I did before, but I’ll leave their names out in case they prefer to fly under the radar. They’re thanked in the book though and they were unfailingly generous with their time.

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