It starts with an idea.

That’s how it works for me. I’ll have an idea of something “bad” going on. A specific type of threat, which needs to be stopped. For Dead Gone, that was someone who was replicating the most unethical psychological experiments to discover more about death – The Dying Place was a group of people fighting back against young men they perceived as a threat to themselves.

(There are, of course, other things that happened before those ideas came out, but this is a shortened version)

With Bloodstream, the threat was someone who wanted to destroy love. Someone who wanted to lift the veil on what looked like normal relationships and expose the lies which lay within.

That doesn’t really go far when you’re staring at a blank page, with another 400 or so to fill though. So, it needs to be fleshed out, characterised, plot…erised (that must be a word by now). How that worked for me with the first two books was by writing. Thousands of words, just working out what the novel will eventually look like. Which represents months and months of work, for what could be small parts of the book. So, when I started writing what become Bloodstream, I took note of what other writers seemed to do and purchased a white board.

Then, when I got that home and realised it was really small, I bought another one.

I started making notes on the boards. Plot points, characters, possible lines, research material. I would fill them, take a picture, then start over again. The photos below are what they looked like when I finished the book.

(Possible spoilers… if you believe in that type of thing)

This worked to a degree, but what I discovered was I need something else when creating a story. A theme. Something which ties the whole story together. So, with Dead Gone, the theme was death. With The Dying Place, the theme turned out to be a few things – power (both having it and the lack of), generation gap, and youth. I needed a theme for Bloodstream, something I could have in the back of my mind whilst writing, giving it some kind of meaning.

Three emerged.

First, there’s the obvious: Love. The romanticism of what is at its base, just a set of emotional responses to another person/s. Familiarity, societal norms and pressures, intimacy. Committment. I wanted to explore what happens when supposedly loving relationships are tested. If someone believed that a loving relationship could contain no lies, would anyone survive?

Second, misogyny and sexism. Specifically within relationship forming. I wanted to look at the prevailing ridiculous idea that if a man is good and true, then a woman deciding not to form a relationship with that man is somehow at fault. This ended up as a more subtle theme within the book, but is something I want to explore at more depth in future, after a lot more reading and research.

Lastly, media. The culture we live in now, with instant reporting, twenty-four hour news, and the desire for more. I have become fascinated with the way in which news is now presented, especially in the case of unfolding events. When you have news reporters in the thick of action in ongoing crimes, such as Raoul Moat, Derrick Bird, the shootings in Sydney etc. Also, the way media treats celebrity – no matter how small – in comparison to others. How is it possible to solve crimes in this culture, when every step is monitored, every decision questioned.

That’s what the new novel Bloodstream is about to me. Of course, this is all told from my main characters’ point of view – Murphy and Rossi. Both of whom are just people, trying to do a job, under increasing pressure from a number of angles. More on those in a later post…

What worked best though, was writing. How I worked with the first two books resulted in a completed novel eventually. However, I had a little more time pressure with Bloodstream (I started it later than I should have and also ended up rewriting half the book due to a mistake… more on that probably never), so planning became a little more important. The writing of it is where I found those themes, characters, ideas, plot points, etc, though. That’s why I always echo what other writers have said in the past – arguably the hardest thing about writing is actually finishing the thing. Whether that’s a story, a novel, a shopping list – finishing what you’ve started is important. Work out the details later. Write and write until you can write no more. Don’t worry if something doesn’t feel right with a particular piece of research, or a character doesn’t seem to be rounded enough. Those are things that can be fixed later. Having a complete story is key at first.

For me, anyway. YMMV.

You can pre-order Bloodstream in paperback here – https://www.waterstones.com/book/bloodstream/luca-veste/9781471141379

And the ebook here – http://www.amazon.co.uk/Bloodstream-Luca-Veste-ebook-x/dp/B00SDMGXAI/ref=pd_sim_351_2?ie=UTF8&refRID=072WNJD8J8DZ2F3M9C0Q

No pigs – dead or alive – were harmed in the writing of this book.