“I WAS 40,000 words into writing an entirely different book when I had the idea for Blood Like Mine,” explains Stuart Neville of how he broke the old adage about never changing horses mid-stream for his latest novel, a US-set thriller with intriguing horror elements.
“I’m always wary of the shiny new idea. Any any writer will tell you, if they are writing one book, it’s always the next idea that’s the one they’re excited about, and there’s always a temptation to set aside what you’re doing in favour of the shiny new thing.
“So, I was worried about that, but this idea kept nagging at me, and I thought, well, if I just write a detailed synopsis, I’ll scratch that itch.”
The book everyone's devouring...#BloodLikeMine by @stuartneville is out in hardback tomorrow >> https://t.co/Zgx8PYHYwf pic.twitter.com/qG07Oskcc7
— Simon & Schuster UK (@simonschusterUK) August 14, 2024
Thus, Neville (53) began sketching out his story about Rebecca Carter and her 12-year-old daughter, Monica, AKA Moonflower, who have been living a nomadic ‘off grid’ existence for years while roaming the US in their van and guarding a dark family secret.
The horrifying truth behind the Carters’ situation comes dangerously close to being exposed when they cross paths with an obsessive FBI agent, Marc Donner, a cybercrime specialist on an increasingly self-destructive crusade to catch an interstate serial killer with a penchant for draining the blood of the victims they’ve been luring to grisly deaths via fake online profiles.
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Fortunately for the readers currently devouring Blood Like Mine, which was published last week, the author’s attempt to scratch the ‘itch’ of his latest brilliant idea actually provoked a rampant all-consuming creative rash.
“It only made things worse,” chuckles Neville, whose last novel was 2021′s dark, supernaturally-tinged psychological thriller The House of Ashes.
“This book was unusual in that everything arrived quite fully formed, which very rarely happens. I think that was part of why the story was pressing so hard to be written: it all arrived kind of in one big blob - the characters, the plot and the setting.
“Within 24 hours, I had the entire thing kind of mapped out in my head. I just wound up contacting my agents and editors and saying to them, very nicely, ‘I don’t think I’m going to finish that book I’m supposed to be writing - I’m gonna write this one instead’.
“Thankfully, they were all very accommodating, and Blood Like Mine is the end result.”
Those currently devouring the new book will be thrilled to learn that it is in fact the first of a planned trilogy, with an already finished sequel, Blood Like Ours, due next year, followed by a final instalment, Blood Like Theirs, which Neville is currently working on.
Hopefully, the sequels will be able to sustain the first book’s enjoyably character-driven storytelling, which powers along at a pleasingly rapid, page-turning clip.
“It’s kind of a hunter versus prey idea,” says Neville of Blood Like Mine, which keeps readers guessing for many chapters about the exact nature of the crimes that have been occurring.
Get ready to lose sleep over #BloodLikeMine.
— Simon & Schuster UK (@simonschusterUK) August 15, 2024
A chilling tale that flows through your veins as relentless as a mother's love.@stuartneville paints a masterpiece in crimson suspense. Out now >> https://t.co/Zgx8PYHYwf pic.twitter.com/lIKYVMr4Xe
“Those roles constantly kind of flip-flop between Rebecca, Donner and Moonflower. I like the idea of people being obsessed to the point of self-destruction - and Donner is very much that. The predators that he’s spent his career chasing are now showing up dead, and it actually injures his pride - the idea that somebody’s out there doing what he can’t. That’s really what drives him.
“What drives Rebecca through the story is purely the will to keep her daughter alive, and the lengths she’ll go to to make sure that happens. Character always drives the story, and in this story in particular I think what made the story so well defined in my head was that these two characters have such well-defined goals: Donner’s is to catch this killer, at any cost. And Rebecca’s is to protect her daughter at any cost.
“Really, all you have to do then is let those characters pursue those goals as far as they can possibly go and see how far they’ll push. That’s really what drives the story along and brings it to its climax.”
Neville’s fans will already have noted that his latest novel finds him utilising the US as the backdrop for its crime/horror crossover rather than his usual Northern Ireland-based settings. It’s the first time the author has chosen to explore America’s vast, murder-accommodating landscapes since his pair of thrillers penned under the pseudonym Haylen Beck, 2017′s Here and Gone and 2019′s Lost You.
“That was a bit of a risk, because I’m more known for writing books set in and around Belfast,” explains the author, who plays guitar in crime-themed covers outfit Fun Lovin’ Crime Writers alongside fellow musically-inclined novelists Val McDermid, Chris Brookmyre, Mark Billingham, Luca Veste and Doug Johnstone.
“But this story required a sense of wilderness, the idea that somebody could lose themselves for years at a time in the middle of nowhere - and we just don’t have that here.
“A lot of it is the same kind of landscape as Here and Gone was set in: the book starts off in the Rockies in Colorado and winds up in northern Arizona, specifically Flagstaff, and I’d spent time in those areas about 15 years ago.
“A good friend of mine who lives in Superior, Colorado in the foothills of the Rockies brought me on a trip up through the mountains to visit the Stanley Hotel, which is the hotel Stephen King based The Shining on.
“And about eight or nine years ago, I did a road trip through Arizona. When you come from where we come from and you’re suddenly in the midst of these very arid landscapes or dense forests, you might as well be visiting Mars. That makes it a nice place to explore for a writer.”
He adds: “But while the setting is different, the horror/crime mashup isn’t that different for me: my previous book The House of Ashes was a crime novel, but also ghost story, and my first book The Twelve was technically a gruesome kind of ghost story as well.
“So, it’s not that big a departure, combining thriller and horror.”
However, what will be a big departure for Neville and his readers is the project he set aside to get stuck into Blood Like Mine - a novel which he still intends to finish.
“The other book was set in Northern Ireland at the end of the Second World War, about a soldier returning from the front to a rural village and finding it very changed,” he reveals.
“It was a very, very, very different kind of book, possibly starting into the literary end of things, which wouldn’t really be my genre, to be honest.
“But I still think there’s a novel there - I just need to kind of figure out what it is.”
