There are three types of shark…
I’ve had a fascination – and slight fear – of sharks ever since I watched Jaws, and then began diving. I’ve been lucky enough to dive in some pretty exotic places over the years, and have had some close encounters with hammerheads, blue sharks, silvertips, bull sharks and a tiger. Never a great white. Not sure I want to see one of those…
Sharks are finely-honed predators, and they can be pretty smart. I remember a bull shark in Sharm el Sheikh (Egypt) splitting off a female diver from the rest of our group, and herding her away from the reef out into the blue.…
Why I wrote 37 Hours
Why did I write 37 Hours? Well first, of course, it’s a sequel. At the end of 66 Metres Nadia has succeeded, but the Client is still out there. In fact the first scene in Chapter One of 37 Hours was originally the epilogue to 66 Metres, but the editor and I decided to leave Nadia languishing in prison. And so the readers demanded a sequel…
But there were five other reasons.
- Jack Reacher
- Diving a nuclear sub
- Shark-attacks
- Chernobyl
- London
Write what you don’t know…
About 18 months ago I was at the York Writer’s Festival pitching my book 66 Metres to three agents, who all roundly rejected it. One of them took me aside, and said, ‘Look, this book is about a young Russian woman. You’re not Russian, you’re not a woman, and let’s face it…’ He told me to write about what I knew. I decided to stick to my course instead, and a year later 66 Metres was published by Harper Collins.
But ever since that conversation, it got me thinking about the adage ‘write what you know.’…