In the week after the psychological thriller For Better, For Worse was released, I will be opportunistic and share its author’s quote for Borderline.
Gritty, sharp-witted, and packing a serious emotional punch! And Rand is a hero worth turning the pages for.
Lauren North
If you like psychological thrillers, I’ll happily recommend this one without even having read it. I’ve read most of Lauren’s other books and she just seems to get better and better. For my money, she’s one of the best writers in that genre. And I feel privileged that she was willing to not only read Borderline, but endorse it as well.
In my post Borderline, Thin Lizzy and Pulp Fiction, I talked about writing a series and how that went against the grain for me. But I finished by alluding to the fact that, when I started writing Borderline, I was going to have to do something else that wasn’t really my style. Before I explain what that was, I’d better give some context.
My first two books had fairly large casts of characters. If you’ve read them, I hope there weren’t too many to be overwhelming. Carrion in particular has groupings of characters and there’s a lot of teamwork. I’m not someone who has ever thrived on teamwork. Any sports I’ve willingly participated in have been the kind you can do solo; I spent 20 years of my working life self-employed – and I’m a writer, which is one of the most solitary activities you can do. So, writing about teams of people pulling together to achieve things might seem contrary, but I find it strangely satisfying.
Borderline has a central character, but he also has a group of people around him who he relies on to help him do what needs to be done. I’ve already had comments from early readers who like certain members of that group, so that’s been very gratifying for me.
Multiple characters often means multiple points of view. Personally, I’ve always found it a lot easier to write in the third person, because it means you can give different perspectives. But it also helps when you want to keep the pace up, as you switch between characters and move the story on more readily. Indeed, the idea of writing in the first person was quite alien to me.
So, when I started to think about my protagonist for this ‘kind of pulp fiction’ story, I was surprised to hear the narrator’s voice in my head, and he was telling me the story as if it had happened to him. Everything was seen through his eyes. And that voice was very distinctive. For the first time ever, I found myself drawn to the idea of writing in the first person.
Of course, I fought against it. I didn’t want the limitations it would impose. Not just on switching scenes – there was also that tricky thing of getting across what the other characters must be thinking or feeling. But Rand kept on talking in my head, and eventually I gave in.
In all honesty, I don’t know whether I achieved everything I needed to, but it’s been an interesting experience, and I’ve learned some new writing skills.
Still, the final judge of whether it worked or not is the reader. If that’s you, I’ll be interested to hear what you’ve got to say. That said, I’m really pleased with it and the way it turned out. So much so that book two is ready to go to an editor, and book three is almost ready for beta readers – so you definitely haven’t seen the end of this character.
Not that most of you have had the chance to read Borderline yet. But that chance is fast approaching. The eBook will be available from 9th June. And you can pre-order it now.