Today, as part of the Falling Suns Blog Tour, I have a fabulous guest post by Julie-Ann Corrigan. If you missed it, you can read my review of this outstanding debut here.
Falling
Suns – institutional corruption and phone/computer hacking
Thank
you for having me on your blog, Michelle. I thought I would talk
about the above themes in my novel, Falling Suns, today.
The
initial inspiration for my book was to show a mother in the first
days following the disappearance of her child, seven-year-old Joe.
Rachel’s worry soon turns to grief when Joe’s body is found. Her
grief and angst is tied up with her own guilt, thinking – and
wrongly so – that it is her fault Joe left the family home
unaccompanied.
As is the case in many abduction/disappearance
cases, the perpetrator of the crime is someone known to the family –
Rachel’s cousin – her father’s brother’s son. Once I’d
decided on the perpetrator’s identity I set about planning another
thread in the novel, because although it is Rachel’s story I knew
that it was important to include Joe’s murderer in the narrative. I
didn’t want to write a straight forward ‘Who did it’ storyline,
but more of a ‘Why did he do it?’
How would I do this, and set up the
rest of the tale?
I began researching psychiatric
hospitals in the UK and dug deep to find inspiration. I also
researched Death Row in the USA and read voluminously the
psychological profiles on the prisoners marked for execution. Finally
I knew I had the second thread to my novel, and also how I would
weave in the two storylines – Joe’s abduction and murder, and the
‘story’ of the murderer, his background and profile. At this
point I’d already begun writing, and it was easy to see how I could
mix the narrative of Rachel with that of Michael Hemmings.
Once I began writing Michael Hemmings
and the institution in which he is incarcerated, and after long chats
with my friend – a criminal lawyer who himself sits on mental
health tribunal panels – I began to plan the plotline of
institutional corruption. I used the outcome of the exposé
to move the plot forward, which ultimately sees Hemmings nominated to
be moved to a less secure step-down unit.
Although there are limited scenes set
within the psychiatric hospital and step-down unit, I felt they were
imperative to the tone of the novel. It is here, as well as
flashbacks from Rachel concerning her childhood, where the reader
(and the writer) really gets to know Michael Hemmings.
I was determined to ensure the
veracity of events within Littleworth Psychiatric hospital. The
corruption that occurs within its walls is based very loosely on
fact, although ultimately this is a work of my own imagination, and
the characters and setting are fictional.
At the time of writing the first draft
of the novel the news seemed to be full of reports regarding Jimmy
Savile and other high profile paedophiles. I do believe that at the
time I was influenced by these reports, and together with other facts
that I’d unearthed, I felt that the Littleworth storyline was in
keeping with the truths emerging regarding the ‘burying and hiding’
of information away from the public.
There
are other areas of the novel that touch upon corruption – within
the police force and concerning Jonathan’s phone and computer
hacking. In both cases I attempted to handle the scenarios with care
and finesse, trying not to evoke too much of a clichéd situation.
Regarding the hacking – again at the
time of writing the first draft – there was much news coverage
about both of these activities. It occurred to me that there was a
time in journalism when a good journalist could well be left behind
in ‘getting their story’ if they didn’t use the same techniques
at gleaning information as some of their colleagues. I felt that
Jonathan could well be one of those journalists. Also … he’s very
good at it!
I hope that the themes I’ve touched
upon in my novel resonate with the reader and never become didactic.
It is a work of fiction, a story, and I hope my readers enjoy it as
such.
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