When I was teenager, my bookshelves (well, the stack of books I kept propped against my bedroom wall – we didn’t have anything as fancy as a shelf) were all horror novels. I couldn’t read any other genre at that point. It was all horror. Then, I didn’t read for ten years.
I was around twenty-four years old when my grandmother handed me a Mark Billingham book. Sleepyhead. She said, “you’ll like this. It’s dark.”. A great recommendation. A few days later, I was given a huge box of all those Stephen King novels I’d once taken from the library a decade earlier and devoured. My aunty Jo was making room and remembered I’d liked him as a kid and thought I’d give them a good home.
I did. They’re sitting on a shelf behind me as I write this.
Thirty odd books, to join the two or three I’d somehow managed to keep hold of since being a teenager and moving around a lot when I left home six years earlier. Now, on that aforementioned shelving behind me, I have well over a 1,000.
I’m not sure what happened in that week. I remember a lot of sleepless nights, as my first child was teething. Maybe that’s what made me pick up a book for the first time in ten years. Maybe it was the nostalgic element of seeing all those Stephen King books – a nice reminder when the darkness was about the possibility of something moving in the shadows, rather than a baby crying out. Whatever it was, I found myself reading Mark Billingham’s book at three in the morning.
That book made me fall in love with reading again. It wasn’t long until I was buying multiple books a day. I discovered Val McDermid, Ian Rankin, John Connolly, Mo Hayder, and so many more amazing British crime writers, all in the space of a month or two. I went through and read their entire backlists.
It made sense when I started writing novels that I would try and emulate those procedural style stories I had fallen in love with. However, I had also discovered the likes of Harlan Coben and Linwood Barclay. Along with the love of horror, I was being pulled in a few different directions when it came to deciding on what I wanted to write.
You Never Said Goodbye is a departure for me, genre-wise, but it is something I’ve wanted to write for years now. When I was writing my procedural novels with Murphy and Rossi, or my crime-horror crossover with The Bone Keeper, this idea has been at the back of my mind, niggling away at me. I knew what I wanted to do with it. I knew it didn’t fit in with what I was writing. Yet, I couldn’t shift this idea. I knew it wouldn’t be like anything I’d written before – a very personal story, that has its roots in my own past experiences – and I knew I had to do it.
I feel like I’ve been building to this shift for years and it was nerve-wracking waiting for those early reviews. More so than the previous seven books! Thankfully, they’ve been incredibly positive and I have many more stories like this one to tell. Ordinary people in extraordinary situations. High-stakes, different continents, and massively emotional elements. I’ve never felt more excited about what’s to come next. You Never Said Goodbye is the culmination of me finding my way, but it is also a beginning.
You Never Said Goodbye is by Luca Veste (Published by Hodder & Stoughton) Out Now.
A DEVOTED MOTHER - Sam Cooper has a happy life: a good job, a blossoming relationship. Yet, there's something he can never forget - the image seared into his mind of his mother, Laurie, dying when he was a child. His father allowed his grief to tear them apart and Sam hasn't seen him in years. A LOVING WIFE - Until an unexpected call from Firwood hospital, asking Sam to come home, puts in motion a chain of devastating events. On his deathbed, Sam's father makes a shocking confession. A LIAR? - Who was Laurie Cooper? It's clear that everything Sam thought he knew about his mother was wrong. And now he's determined to find out exactly what she did and why - whatever the cost. What happens if you discover you've been lied to by your own family for twenty-five years? Sam Cooper is about to find out.
More information about Luca Veste and his books can be found on his blog or you can find him on Twitter @LucaVeste. Luca Veste is one half of the podcast “Two Crime Writers and a Microphone” You can follow them on Twitter @TwoCrimeWriters. He is also the bass player for The Fun Lovin' Crime Writers. @FunLovinWriters
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