Colin Ward
This answer contains spoilers…
(view spoiler)[That's actually a really tough question. It is my debut novel and I originally worked on it for NaNoWrimo (Google it!) in 2014. I planned it very quickly and threw together draft one in just a month (for NaNoWriMo!). I know I initially got the idea to do with a murderer killing several women in a grotesque way quite quickly - and then added that he would do that in a way that would be as if he was trying to communicate something from his past. I was inspired a lot by Adam Creed's "Suffer the Children" where the killer enacts a kind of final justice to paedophiles who have left prison. A kind of social justice of the extreme.
But I was also driven to explore the issues of what drives people. It is too easy to denounce killers as mere sociopaths or psychopaths. It's when they are NOT mentally ill that it makes the murder darker. So I wanted my killer to have been formed by his own life, and that is where the issue of Parental Alienation came in. It was something I was learning about as I supported a friend through a really tough legal problem with his ex and slowly but surely is wove its wave into the central fabric of the story.
So I think my debut novel is a collection of being inspired by other writers - also including Lisa Balantyne, whose "The Guilty One" is a superb example of how to use flashback in a story structure to move the narrative forward rather than just provide back story and context. Add to that the issues of PA and the notions of ultra-hatred...I then decided to set it in Birmingham and make the location of the murders important to the story. (hide spoiler)]
But I was also driven to explore the issues of what drives people. It is too easy to denounce killers as mere sociopaths or psychopaths. It's when they are NOT mentally ill that it makes the murder darker. So I wanted my killer to have been formed by his own life, and that is where the issue of Parental Alienation came in. It was something I was learning about as I supported a friend through a really tough legal problem with his ex and slowly but surely is wove its wave into the central fabric of the story.
So I think my debut novel is a collection of being inspired by other writers - also including Lisa Balantyne, whose "The Guilty One" is a superb example of how to use flashback in a story structure to move the narrative forward rather than just provide back story and context. Add to that the issues of PA and the notions of ultra-hatred...I then decided to set it in Birmingham and make the location of the murders important to the story. (hide spoiler)]
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