Published by Bloodhound Books on January 23 2019
Pages: 218
Amazon UK
When twenty-two year old Gillian Thompson returns from university for the summer, it is apparent there is tension at home. An irritant to her father and a concern to her mother, Gillian’s home life is less than ideal.
Geraldine, Gillian’s mother, has suffered abuse from Joe for years. However, it is not until Joe dies that the family dynamic shifts and Gillian starts out on her own dark journey…
When Gillian meets Paul and Daniel she starts to become the person she always knew she was. And as people around her start dying Gillian faces scrutiny from her mother.
But are the deaths accidents or is something more sinister at work?
Today, I have the pleasure of welcoming C.S Barnes to the blog today with an exclusive guest post just for you lovely people! Do make sure you check out the other fabulous bloggers who are closing the tour with me, Amanda at Ginger Book Geek and Judith at Books&MoreBooks2017.
So before we read this post, let us check out some of what has been said so far on the tour
Donna’s book blog says
I did enjoy the story and I especially enjoyed the characterisation and the interaction between the main characters. I thought the storyline was well planned out and I loved the suspense that built up to the ending.
Mixing Reality with Fiction says
This book for a debut, is brilliantly written with great depth & holds a brilliant character in Gillian. She has her history but is trying to get on with it despite everything.
If you like twisty, gripping and get-in-your-head type of books, this is perfect for you.
The Bookwormery says
This is an extraordinary book by C S Barnes, that shows the inner mind of a psychopath and the relationship she has with others close to her.
It has some disturbing moments like….. “For my own curiosity then, tell me: what shocked you more, the animal with the broken neck or the patricide? Really take some time to consider that, and then tell me why I’m the only monster”….
My intention is making sure my windows are all shut tight !!! If you like a dark thriller then you’ll love this, it doesn’t come much darker.
And now the Guest Post….
✮ Guest Post ✮
The writing journey behind Intention
Most of my Undergraduate students are horrified when I tell them that I scrapped my novel when I was 30,000 words into it. They look at me in abject horror at the sheer thought of getting that far through anything, and then turning back and starting from scratch. It’s my favourite way of telling them what the writing process is really like.
Intention is fully-formed and well-polished now, but in the beginning, my protagonist and I were sort of blindly wandering from one plot hole to the next and staring into it with shared terror. I didn’t know where the book was going for a really long time. I spent the first 30,000 words or so trying to be the female Dexter; trying to find cool ways for my main character, Gillian, to kill people – consisting of things like starving a man to death in her basement, which is where I was in the storyline when I decided to stop writing completely (I sometimes think of that poor character still stuck in that draft, maybe I’ll get back to him in another book). Eventually, the cool ways of killing people gave way to something much more substantial, much more psychological and, perhaps most importantly, something much more entertaining for the length of a novel (killing people in cool ways gets old after 30,000 words or so, as it turns out).
It took a little while, but I eventually found the voice and the drive that I wanted and so the first draft was born – there were a few tantrums along the way (both from myself and my main character, that is) but I had a book; I had something full and ‘finished’ to work with. The re-drafting process that followed this was quite an involved one. My dining room ended up looking like a terrible pastiche of a detective film, wherein there were various character maps, character-motivation charts, and plotted and revised chapter plans, all of which were connected by a series of colour-coded systems from one part of the room to another. Looking back, it was kind of crazy – but it worked. From draft one to draft two, Intention lost another 30,000 words or so on line edits and carefully planned out chapter changes alone, and from then on it was a case of working out one kink after another. One draft at a time, I would focus on one issue – it mightbe an issue that involved changing ten chapters, but it was still only ever one issue. The next draft would be something else, and so on, and so forth, until it was time to read through the entire thing in the desperate hope that in fixing those issues, I hadn’t created more (welcome to writing). It took about five drafts in total before I started using the word ‘finished’ with any level of confidence; I think I was always quietly working on the assumption that any future editor would find another X-amount of things to fix, so I never wanted to be too cocksure about the book being completed. But after those drafts, it certainly felt like the book was as finished as it was going to get without fresh eyes, and that’s where Bloodhound Books came in…
I’m making it sound simple and methodical; anyone who was actually in my life at the time will tell you that it was anything but. Writing Intention was difficult and there were times when I absolutely hated it (am I allowed to say that?) but the one constant – which was, I suppose, the thing that time after time kept me going – was that I always felt like I had a story to tell through Gillian. My mother takes great delight, even now, in telling me what a horrible story it is; nevertheless, I hope it’s one that people will enjoy reading.
Wow, this was interesting to read – thank you for sharing this with us!!
Until next time xxx
My thanks to Emma at Bloodhound book for the tour invite and the author for the Guest Post
lel2403 says
https://orlando-books.blog/2019/01/31/intention-by-c-s-barnes-book-review/