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.’…
When is a novel finished?
This is a kind of zen koan – a mind-bending unanswerable question – for many authors. But as I’m getting ready to send off my next manuscript, these are the ten questions I ask myself:
- Prose – is it fresh, evocative, vivid, agile? Is it clean, with the occasional sparkle? Are the first five pages as good as they can possible be? Does it have a killer first line? Does the reader get a feel (or at least a hint) for the upcoming conflict in the first few pages?