The Appointed – history

The Appointed came to life in a roundabout way. I had very little idea of what was going to happen. I knew it would be a fantasy novel, and at that time, a stand-alone book. It would be aimed primarily at mid-teens upwards, although I would be the last to put an age limit on any book.

The characters, however, were really vivid in my mind, long before I had a story to go with them. They came to me fully fledged and bursting with life and I knew I had to share them with the world.

I knew from the start that my heroine and hero would dislike one another and that was the basis for my story. I also knew that my characters had to be believable if readers were to swallow their story and feel for their plight.

The story emerged tentatively at first, with many periods of writer’s block, and one truly dreadful moment when I realised there was a serious problem and was forced to start more or less from scratch. The original ending also was a far cry from the final one, and it was at that point that I realised there was still much more of this story left to tell.