Writing Magazine

The BONES of a story

Don’t Look Away is the third book in my Stephanie King series, set in the beautiful English county of Cornwall. Before starting this series, I had always set my thrillers in cities – mainly Manchester – but the first book in the Stephanie King series (And So It Begins), came to me complete with a fully-formed vision of the location: a stunning property built into a cliff overhanging the sea. So, Manchester was clearly out!

Since that first novel, the ocean has become almost a character in its own right, woven into each book in the series, in stories that couldn’t take place anywhere else.

My obsession with the sea has developed since I moved to the tiny island of Alderney in the Channel Islands, living in a home which is surrounded by sea on three sides, and I love its changing moods – from

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