Why I wrote 37 Hours

I remember when the accident at Three Mile Island (TMI) happened. It was the first time anything major transpired with a nuclear power plant. At the time I was pro-nuclear – it was hailed as the way forward: clean, limitless energy. I’ve always had a fascination with science, and nuclear energy and space exploration seemed to be the pinnacle of our achievements: splitting the atom and putting men on the moon. But the honeymoon with nuclear was over.
The real storm hit with Chernobyl.
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Insomnia isn’t always a bad thing…

This morning I woke up at three am. I had a plane to catch to Rome, so maybe that was it. But I wasn’t due to get up until 5:45. I tried to sleep for an hour or so, and then it happened, as it sometimes does. My brain started typing.  A line. Not just any line. A killer line.

When trained killers enter a dark, smoke-filled room hunting their quarry, they don’t usually look up to the ceiling.
Damnit.
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Writers and Russian Roulette

People always ask me if I know the end of my next book. I always reply yes,  because I do, and that I know the beginning. However, the middle 250 or so pages is sometimes a different matter. It’s like being able to see a house on a faraway mountain, but the valley before it is shrouded in mist. As a writer, having promised a book to a deadline, this kind of feels like Russian roulette, because there’s a chance that the inspiration simply never comes…

After 66 Metres and 37 hours, which have the same protagonist (Nadia) but are slightly different books in style, I wanted the third one also to be different.…


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