The Wyngrave Women Trilogy

Why a Sequel? Why a Series?

Book bereavement. You knew there was such a thing because you've finished wonderful books, books that you felt you were living in, and then you felt bereft. At a loss. You couldn't think what to read next. So you started your next book but you were still thinking about the last...

Can you imagine how much worse it is if you've spent one, two or more years writing a book? Perhaps some overworked writers with pressing deadlines are glad to type THE END and see the back of their characters, but I've always experienced book bereavement. It was so bad after TIME'S PRISONER, I had to write a sequel.

I could have done that with several other books because I tend to leave endings a bit open - sometimes very open - and readers have often requested a sequel, perhaps because they feel bookishly-bereaved. But TIME'S TYRANNY is the first sequel I've written. I considered writing one for STAR GAZING and EMOTIONAL GEOLOGY and I started writing a spin-off to CAULDSTANE in which the second hero, Rupert, the retired ghost-busting minister finds love, but I dropped it to write TIME'S PRISONER.

2024 was a very bad year for me, personally and in terms of my mental and physical health. There were several real bereavements, including two of my oldest and dearest friends. I did little other than get by and write TIME’S TYRANNY. I'm inclined to become immersed in whatever I'm writing and my characters become almost as real to me as living people. There were times towards the end of writing TIME'S TYRANNY when I walked into a room and was surprised (and disappointed) to find Jesper Olsen wasn't there.

I've always claimed that in a way your fictional characters seem more real to an author than friends and family because as their creator you're inside their heads. You might know your partner, friends or children very well, but you don't know what they're thinking, nor why they do what they do. You don't know exactly what they will say next. With characters you've created, you do.

Then when you've typed THE END, you feel as if you've dumped people, sometimes leaving them in a terrible state (eg TIME'S PRISONER and A LIFETIME BURNING). You get on with Real Life in a distracted sort of way, but you're wondering how - and if - your imaginary friends are managing.

I thought of bringing back ALB's musician anti-hero, Rory Dunbar, inserting him into the musical life of STAR GAZING’s Marianne, perhaps as a suitor for her. But when I started thinking it through and worked out how many years had passed since the end of ALB, I thought Rory would probably be dead. Unable to live without his sister (that's not a spoiler – she's dead on p.1), I felt pretty sure Rory would have taken his life since the book ended. I feel so responsible for my characters, but they can't all have happy endings – at least, not in the kind of books I write.

In a way I’m not surprised I’ve written several books that feature ghosts, characters who are ghost-like, or might be ghosts. I find I'm “haunted” by many of the characters I’ve created. I “hear” their voices and my job is to write down what they say. Sometimes I hear them long after the book is finished. The dialogue isn't always over.

The characters in TIME’S PRISONER haunted me and I felt compelled to write a sequel, TIME’S TYRANNY. That turned out to be a very long book, so I cut the final chapter which tied up loose ends. Then I realised that chapter was actually the beginning of a third book. It seemed that the characters in TIME'S PRISONER were going to continue to haunt me, especially Queenie Brooke-Bennet who never actually appeared again after the Prologue, but remained a presence throughout. She said it was time for her story to be told.

So now there will be a third book, working title TIME'S TAPESTRY, and The Wyngrave Women will become a series.