With The Night They Vanished, the first sentences I wrote were from the landing page of The Dark Tourist website, which is an integral part of the book. I asked myself ­– what if you found your family home listed as the site of a terrible murder on a true crime website? And then you can’t get hold of your family, they’ve vanished into the night… This branched out into – what happened the night they vanished? Where is the family? Who listed the house on the website? And why? If the story questions stick, it becomes an idea I can’t leave alone, and the story builds over time. When the general story is fixed in my mind, I have to develop the characters before I can begin writing – for me, it’s the characters that bring the story to life.

I started out writing women’s fiction, character driven fiction that was all about the lead up to the happy-ever-after. But the more I wrote, the more I became fascinated by the darker side of my characters. Relationships – whether romantic or familial – are at the heart of my writing and for me, a psychological thriller is the flip side of a romance novel; it’s what happens after the happy-ever-after moment, how a relationship breaks down, how a friendship can spiral into paranoia and obsession… that’s what fascinates me as a writer. In real life, I’d much prefer the happy-ever-after.

My stories begin in notebooks. I’ll have a few ideas written down, a couple of story questions. The ones that bite, I’ll mull over for a few weeks, sometimes longer – they’re usually brewing while I’m editing another book. Those few lines develop into longer notes, character sketches, mini scenes between the characters. As the notebook fills up, I start thinking about rough outline, to be sure there is enough story to make a book. When the story gets so loud in my head it wakes me in the night, I know it’s time to sit and write it!