new book

The Story Behind My Next Book

~ ChanAtkins ~ 2 Comments

Last week I shared the news that my 22nd book will be released next month!

If you’d like to check it out, here is the preorder link! https://amzn.eu/d/0gSeWqen

At Night We Played In The Road was four years in the making and today I want to tell you the story and inspiration behind the novel.

Four years ago I was in the process of rewriting and revamping The Boy With The Thorn In His Side series. I still think having the power and control to change and revamp independently published books is one of the best things about being an indie author.

At the time, I was changing what was two books (The Boy With The Thorn In His Side and its sequel, This Is The Day) into a five book series. The original book was huge, and when I got the idea for new material and events that could be sandwiched between that story and the sequel, I knew I had to turn it all into a series. The original book was split into two, a third book with new events was written and made into book three, the sequel became book four, and just doing all of that gave me ideas for material for book five.

It felt like a crazy and risky thing to do at the time, especially considering I had lots of other books lined up to work on, but it felt like the right thing to do. And it was. I am hugely proud of that gritty 5-book series. I feel like it is a whole universe you can really dig deep into. The series, of course, links to other books I’ve written, where characters are mentioned or the same locations are used. This led to me creating a universe of inter-linked books and At Night We Played In The Road is one of them.

But back to where the idea came from…

At the time I had ideas for book 5 in The Boy… series, and one day I was watching the TV show Supernatural with my eldest child in her bedroom. She had been badgering me for years to watch it and when I finally gave in, I loved it. I’ve rewatched the entire thing many times since then! And one of the things that really hooked me about the show was the relationship between the brothers, Sam and Dean Winchester.

Some might argue it is an unhealthy and co-dependent relationship, and they might be right, but essentially it is a loving and protective one, with each brother prepared to kill and die for the other. The older brother, Dean, has brought Sam up and throughout the show, is also a father to him. This really interested me and their unusual relationship was one of my favourite things about Supernatural.

During that period I was also rewatching Breaking Bad. That is another show I have watched multiple times! With these two shows playing on my mind, I started to get ideas for two characters. Two brothers.

Inspired by the relationship in Supernatural, I created Alfie, four years older than Tom. When Tom was born, their mother died in childbirth and their father, Fred, has never forgiven Tom for it. Unable to bond with the baby that caused the death of his beloved wife, Fred all but abandons Tom. In fact, Fred is unable to even look at his younger son. Instead, he throws his attention and his dreams into Alfie.

Inspired somewhat by Breaking Bad, I decided that Fred would be in the drugs business, something he has taken over from his own father and hopes to pass down to Alfie. A family business growing and selling cannabis.

I then wrote these brothers into book five of The Boy With The Thorn In His Side and they became part of Danny’s story-line as he attempts to finally free himself from his criminal past. I had no intention of giving them their own book, but I fell so in love with them I started to get ideas about their back story.

As I wrote them into that series, the characters of Tom and Alfie just exploded to life in my head.

That’s the way it works and it feels like magic.

Suddenly, they had a back story, their own individual mannerisms and personality traits and their own dreams for the future. I still find creating characters one of the best aspects of writing! I absolutely love it.

I wanted Alfie to be the more serious of the brothers, the one with the weight of the world on his shoulders. He does not like what his father’s criminality has done to their family. His father seems oblivious to the harm he has caused his sons. ( He abandons the boys every time his own mental health declines.) A mixture of simply not being able to cope and occasionally being incarcerated, leads to the boys going in and out of foster care as children.

I gave Tom Tourette’s Syndrome as it was something I was researching a lot at the time. My youngest child was displaying a lot of verbal and physical tics and I spoke to a doctor about the possibility of it being TS, but eventually they calmed down, and though he still likes to make his noises, I don’t think an official diagnosis is needed. However, the research was not wasted when I gave these attributes to Tom.

Compared to Alfie, Tom is more sociable, friendly and reckless. He will do anything to get his father’s attention – including getting himself dragged into crime.

Alfie constantly feels like Tom is in danger and that he must protect him. He cannot let go of that feeling so he is unable to live or even develop independently as his own person. For this reason, he sometimes suffocates and stifles Tom, who eventually begins to rebel.

Tom adores his older brother though, and as he grows older, he realises that Alfie has given up everything for him.

The plot sees them eventually estranged as they take very different paths in life, and it alternates between the past so we can see how that led them to where they are now. And where they are now is a very dangerous place.

Alfie has not seen his brother in years but one day he is brought to his door with a gun to his head. Alfie must save his brother’s life one more time. And to do that, they must face the past they escaped from.

Here is the blurb!

When Tom Lane was born, he accidentally killed his mother and in the process, his father’s love.

Determined to protect Tom from their father’s criminal business, older brother Alfie must become Tom’s father, mother and protector. It’s the two of them against the world until the day Tom chooses a life of crime over Alfie’s dream of a normal life.
Ten years later the estranged brothers are reunited when a violent gang bring Tom to Alfie’s door with a gun to his head.

Tom’s partners in crime have turned on him and he needs his brother to save him one more time…


Thanks for reading!

See you next week!

The Day The Earth Turned Series Is Complete!

~ ChanAtkins ~ 2 Comments

This feels so good!

Today is publication day for The Day The Earth Turned Book 4: Spring, the fourth, and final installment in my YA post-apocalyptic/climate horror series.

It’s twice as exciting, because it’s not just the publication day for a book, it’s the completion of a series. I can now let it go (aside from marketing it) and believe me, that frees up so much space and energy in my head for other books.

I will kiss it a fond goodbye and move on, and there is so much screaming for my attention right now!

The Day The Earth Turned series started as an idea when I was very, very angry. It was about five years ago when we found out the land directly behind us was earmarked to be developed. Our landlord owns that land and a lot of land in this area, and for many years, it had been quarried. The diggers moved around from field to field, digging it up for sand, then letting it all go wild again.

When we first moved in, fourteen years ago, the land behind us was a field used for horses. There is a strip of woodland down the middle, and on the other side, more fields which were used for growing corn or wheat. Not long after we moved in, they quarried the fields right behind us. It was sad at the time to see the grass torn up, but grass does grow back quickly, and once the job was done, that’s exactly what happened. Now, years later, it’s a beautiful field surrounded by hedges and trees, and the best spot to watch the sun go down.

We often watch deer out there and when the centre floods in the winter, we get ducks and geese on the water and the sunsets are even more spectacular.

Needless to say, we were horrified by the thought of them building on it. They have now reached the last plot to be quarried and after that, the whole area is up for grabs. The landowner has made millions out of allowing it to be quarried for so long, but he obviously wants to keep milking it for more money. Rich people are just never rich enough, right?

The first idea put forward by various developers who started circling like sharks, was a fake water lagoon. It would involve digging up all the fields, pouring concrete over them and constructing a huge water park tourist attraction. Goodbye deer, badgers, rabbits, hares, voles, shrews, weasels, stoats and all the other wildlife we have spotted there over the years…

There were instant objections – the roads around here are not built to cope with that many visitors and during a local parish meeting, the council admitted that our lanes (narrow hedge-lined country lanes that loop around this land) would have to be widened to allow more vehicles and prevent the main road becoming even more congested.

I wept. I really did. Our lanes are lined with mature hedges and beautiful ancient oak trees. Like the fields behind them, they provide homes and food for so much wildlife.

I’d walk the lanes with my dogs, my eyes filling with tears as I imagined the pointless destruction. We live less than ten minutes from the beach, for Christ’s sake. Why does anyone need a fake lagoon?

The answer is, we don’t.

But people have to make money out of land, right? It can’t possibly be rewilded, left to nature, left to provide vital habitats for one of the most nature-depleted countries in the world!

Ugh. It sickened me and it still does. The good news is, another water park with a very similar design has just been approved not far from here, so there is no way now this one will go through. That just means they’ll decide to build something else on it though.

For now, it’s safe. The deer can roam through the copse and the badgers can frolic in the moonlight. For now, it’s left alone.

When we heard about the development plans, I started thinking, if only nature could fight back! If only the wildlife could develop a higher state of consciousness, thought even. They would be full of rage. They would hate us. If Mother Nature was a conscious entity, she would want revenge. She would want to cull us.

And that’s where the idea came from.

I imagined the world, the earth itself, turning on us. It would start with the adults as they’ve got the most blood on their hands. It would wipe them out with multiple pandemics, and along with that, animals and plants would start attacking us and killing us to save themselves.

I wanted to write a post-apocalyptic story and I thought it would be far more interesting if all the adults were killed and only the children were left.

How would they survive without the adults? Without food and resources, without transport, without school, without law, without medicine? Would they turn on each other or pull together? Would they be able to figure out a better way to live on this earth?

I knew early on that I wanted the animals to have their say and that’s why there are often chapters from the point of view of an animal or bird.

It wasn’t easy to write. It never is when I get the concept and plot before the characters. Notes, ideas and character bios started being added to a notebook about five years ago, and eventually that became a bigger notebook once I started writing it. It was in past tense at one point and then I switched it to present. That was tedious!

But overall, I am incredibly proud of this series. The reviews are so positive. It really seems to strike a chord with people. I hope readers enjoy the ending!

And as for seeing these characters again in the future, I’ll just say, never say never! There is a part of me that is very curious about what happened next….

But right now, there are three more books waiting to be polished up and published!

Thank you to everyone who has supported this series. From my wonderful beta readers, arc readers, fellow authors and bloggers, and to my wonderful editor/proofreader who is an absolute star. I am so grateful to you all. The indie community is a wonderfully welcoming and supportive one. Thank you also to my son, Dylan for designing the front covers for me! They’re perfect!

Here’s the series link if you’re curious about diving in and finding out what happens to young people without adults when the very land beneath their feet is turning on them: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0CBW3D8VL?binding=kindle_edition&ref=dbs_dp_rwt_sb_pc_tkin

The Joy Of Being Lost In A World I Created

~ ChanAtkins ~ 8 Comments

Oh, it is such bliss to be back here again…

It’s been too long…

I had almost forgotten what this feels like…

Image by Mystic Art Design from Pixabay

I’m talking about the unique and blissful joy of being utterly immersed and lost within a world you created. I often blog about how magical writing is – partly because I feel it so strongly and partly to counteract the often negative view towards writing I come across online. You know the memes; writing is torture; writing is terrible; writing is so, so hard…

Nah, I don’t see it that way.

I could go on all day about how wonderful, brilliant, life-affirming and beautiful writing is but today I just want to focus on one aspect; getting lost in a world you created.

At the moment, I have the next three books in The Day The Earth Turned series ready and waiting for their release dates. This will be October 2023, January 2024 and April 2024, roughly. By June, 2024, I hope to have At Night We Played In The Road published, which is a spin-off from The Boy With The Thorn In His Side series. After that, I plan to release The Mess of Us (long-awaited sequel to my debut, The Mess Of Me) around September 2024 time and finally, the last book in that connected universe, The Dark Finds You will come out around either at the end of 2024 or the start of 2025. These books are all finished! Some are awaiting beta reader feedback and one is about to come back from the editor. They all have front covers ready. There’s not a lot more I can do to any of them other than responding to feedback and edits when I get them and preparing them for release…

As you know, my self-imposed writing ban ended a few weeks ago when I gave in and started typing Black Hare Valley up on my laptop. This is, of course, the book I’d vaguely planned with a map, character bios and plot ideas and then ended up writing entirely in long-hand in five notebooks during a prolonged power cut in February 2022.

After that frenzied writing session, I put it away to concentrate on everything else.

And now here I am, happily typing up my own work, work I barely remember writing, transferring longhand from notebooks into a Word document on my laptop.

Every night I sit at the laptop for at least an hour and type up what I can. Every night, the story reveals itself to me like a dream I can barely remember. It feels so fresh and new, like I only wrote it yesterday, but at the same time, I have little memory of being the person behind the pen.

I am loving this.

Black Hare Valley is a strange little town with a lot of strange goings-on. I got the initial idea after reading Stephen King’s epic ‘It’ for the third time. I love that book. I would read it again tomorrow. I feel like Black Hare Valley is my personal homage to the great, master of horror, Stephen King. Funnily enough, after coming up with the idea, I watched Stranger Things on Netflix and realised there are a few comparisons. Only in the sense that it’s another strange little town where strange things happen and it’s mostly up to the kids to solve it!

When I came up with the idea, it wasn’t much of an idea; it was really just the town, which I had great fun creating with my son on a large piece of roll out paper. I still love that map. We put such detail into it, the whole place just came alive. I was also inspired by recent visits to iron age hill forts and places like Hell Lane, in Dorset. I was inspired by dark, magical, local folklore, and slowly the story began to write itself.

At the start I just had a missing child, and a group of kids thrown together trying to solve the mystery. They soon realise there is far more to their close-knit and seemingly ‘perfect’ town than they ever realised…

It was such fun to write and it’s even better now, sat here night after night, writing it up. I look forward to it all day. In my head, I am going to Black Hare Valley. I am there every evening, lost inside a world I created, wandering the streets after dark, wondering who is keeping secrets and whose those glinting eyes in the shadows belong to… I am there with my heroes, my band of misfit teenagers who are slowly unravelling the darkness that forms the foundations of their town, in order to find out what happened to missing Paddy Finnis…

I am there, in the warm and cosy Hound and Hare pub, and I am there at the old ruins, hiding from shadows. I am there in Black Woods, searching for strange footprints, and I am there at the school, where the headmaster has something quite evil behind that thin smile of his… I am there in The Magic Of Books bookshop, sneaking between old dusty books for answers, I am there at Hill Fort Farm, the highest point of the valley where Mayor Sumner keeps a watchful eye over the town her ancestors founded…

I am there! Every night I go missing. I’m not here, I’m not anywhere you can find me. I am in Black Hare Valley and I don’t want to come back…

This is without a doubt one of the best and most magical things about being a writer.

The Day The Earth Turned Book 1: Summer is here!!!

~ ChanAtkins ~ 6 Comments

With the benefit of hindsight, I never should have scheduled a book release for a day when I would be totally exhausted from a trip to London to see a band! The Day The Earth Turned Book 1: Summer is finally here and went live yesterday. The moment it went live I was sat at a bus-stop outside Waterloo Station, after a brilliant gig by The Black Keys at the 02 Arena in London. To get there, we had to catch three trains then opted for a pleasant 43 minute walk alongside the river Thames. Once inside the arena, my husband and I grabbed a pint and settled down to enjoy the support acts followed by the band. We have loved this band for a very long time so it was a huge deal to get tickets and their performance was mind-blowing. We loved every second and it was well worth the stress of getting there and back!

After the gig ended, we had to race back to Charlton station to catch the last train there, to get us to the last train at London Bridge, knowing we had already missed the last train at Waterloo which would take us home. We stupidly thought we could just hang out and rest at the station until the morning train came at 5.30am but no, they chuck you out. With nowhere to go, we wandered around the streets of London, taking in views of The London Eye, Big Ben, the houses of Parliament, Downing Street and more…. We walked for hours but then ended up back outside the station with more hours left to kill….

I looked at Amazon and realised my book had been released! Yay!! And I’ve done a pretty good job of promoting it so far in the run up. I’ve posted various blogs about it, made numerous quote and review graphics, secured a good amount of ARC reviews and even organised my own blog tour!

But launch day fell a little flat because I was so tired….

After finally getting the train at Waterloo, we attempted to nap but were soon disrupted by a delay at Woking. The delay meant they then decided not to stop at all the stations between Brockenhurst and Bournemouth so they could make up the time! Never mind the fact that we needed to get off at Christchurch where our car was!

We swore quite a lot but there was nothing we could do and thankfully my mum came and picked us up and drove us to our car and we were home by 8.30am just in time to take our youngest to school! Phew! I walked the dogs and then collapsed on the sofa. I picked up my phone with a feeble attempt at pushing my book on release day, and I was so thrilled to see that lots of my fellow indie authors had already been posting and shouting about it!

Yay other indies – they are the BEST!!!

I had some early reviews too and I just about had the energy to share the posts and thank people and then I fell asleep!

It’s been a busy week and I should have organised some sort of Facebook launch party as I have done in the past, but I was too worn out and to be honest, I’ve never found such things particularly useful for selling books. Mostly, you end up giving away a few for free and then people don’t remember to review them.

Anyway, all that aside, I am very proud of this book and I’m thrilled to bits with what people are saying about it so far!

Here are a few review quotes:

“What I loved about this in particular are the characters, who are so well drawn I felt I knew them straight away. Chess – dealing with her grief not just for her parents but for the future way she saw her life that will never come – having to put her feelings aside to care for her little sister. Reuben – loner, victim of bullies but standing strong, bubbling with anger, but practical and compassionate. Gus – glad the adults have gone, but choosing to take control as soon as he can. George – independent, determined to go it alone, forced into a situation he couldn’t have envisaged – This book is terrifyingly believable.”

“Seriously good! A strange apocalyptic world where the adults have (almost) all been wiped out by a series of diseases and the children have to find a new way to live and survive and have divided themselves into gangs with their own territories and their suspicious outlook about others.
The absolute brilliance of this is the fact that it is not a million miles from what you can imagine as reality, especially after the unprecedented effects of covid 19 and the extreme measures we all faced ourselves with. The unsettled feelings intensify when the children in the story go back to nature and try farming the lands and making use of the animals but then nature seems to take advantage of there being fewer humans about and pushing back to the point of being sinister and the aggressor.
The story is expertly compelling and terrifying at the same time and it is definitely thought provoking and humbling – I absolutely cannot wait to see how the story progresses, although obviously with trepidation! – Terrifying but absolutely brilliant, thank you.”

“Where did I find it: having read this author before, and it was a post apocalyptic story, I jumped at the chance to have an advanced copy.

What I liked: the whole concept for this genre. It was different. Having children in charge changed things as they see life differently. In places the story is dark, mentioning things I didn’t want to dwell on. All the while I felt glued to the page eager to know what would happen next. Other things added to the suspense – not all adults died, and something sinister was happening with nature.

What I didn’t like: that this is a brand new book, which means I have to wait for the next one. I can’t wait!

Overall: this is a brilliantly conceived story. I love things that are slightly different to what you expect. There are several different elements to this story and I constantly wanted to answers. What was really going on? What did it mean? This is a book you need to read, and it will be a hot contender for my book of the year. I absolutely loved it.”

And the book is available here – paperback coming soon!!

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Day-Earth-Turned-Book-Summer-ebook/dp/B0C5MP91J7/ref=pd_ci_mcx_mh_mcx_views_0?pd_rd_w=KYqXM&content-id=amzn1.sym.6aea875e-359f-49f3-864f-cff62d586b6a&pf_rd_p=6aea875e-359f-49f3-864f-cff62d586b6a&pf_rd_r=C5GDYYVB846J1K97XMBN&pd_rd_wg=LmAZU&pd_rd_r=293d83fc-ad68-40f9-8453-5c20bb1d05a3&pd_rd_i=B0C5MP91J7: The Day The Earth Turned Book 1: Summer is here!!!