Aged 10, in primary school, when the class did a project to produce individually the imaginary front page of a newspaper at the time headlining a great event in history as it happened. I decided on the Spanish Armada and, at the time, the dreadful threat to England, its people and way of life.

The book goes back to a chance happening in January 1998 in a bookshop when, browsing women’s literature, coming to the erotic fiction collection, I came across paperbacks with covers I would have associated more with porn mags for men (clearly I had a sheltered upbringing). Surprised, I opened one at random and read down a couple of pages. It was a situation involving a man and woman discussing what to do with the naked woman kneeling before them. For a scene so rich in narrative potential (visual, aural, sensual, emotional, psychological – the stuff that makes up our own moment-to-moment existence) the dialogue was so wooden and unnatural, the sparse depiction, so devoid of atmosphere, character demeanor or reactions, so flat and matter-of-fact, that they could have been a pair of local council workers sent round to weigh up some problem reported by a council tax payer. The whole scene and content seemed quite anaemic and I said to my partner that even I could write better than that (hubris, no doubt). “Go on then …” came the response, and the rest is history, literally, as, once completed in 1999, the draft stayed in the drawer till late summer 2013 as other things were happening in life.
To cut a long story short, after rereading it, knocking it into shape, and after a lot of time on the web investigating self-publishing and e-publishing options and platforms, and much time on US tax law relating to royalties and tax treaties, ITIN, W-7, W-8BEN, passport certification, etc, I finally wised up and thought life’s too short for all this and remembered why I had written the book in the first place. So now it’s published and if it’s damned, too bad. At least I’ve done it. That’s the gist of the story behind the book.

A bit crude and simple really: Have idea for the story > sketch out gist of the plot > make notes on characters > sketch out basic events/scenes/actions (many naturally comprising subsequent chapters) – can be large reams of paper or, in some cases, a few sparse sentences, depending on creative flow – (I didn’t get bogged down over sparser chapters, could further develop another time as it was important to go with the creative flow when it’s there no matter how jumbled things got) > then review > amend > review > amend > etc. > etc. > leave 14 years in a drawer (not recommended) > then review afresh > amend > review > amend >etc. till convinced it is what I wanted to write all along.
The opening: not conceived till late in the writing until finished the ending, by which time, I had got a clearer picture of the novel and that it needed a succinct and frank introduction to the main character in the hope that it would sustain the interest of the reader through the subsequent, more mundane trail of information and events that were necessary background for the much more dramatic events to come.
The title: only conceived when the original draft had been finished and I was free to stand back and think what summed up the experience of the central character of the novel in just a few words. The title is a blend of literal and figurative aspects of events and the weather with the underlying reality of the kind of soaking the heroine gets when exposed to the weather of the dark world in which she is out of her depth. It was not all that heavy however. Up to that point, the working title had been ‘Splashed with spunk!’ which my partner had suggested after something I had said. Part of the fun of writing the novel was the inherent comical side of kinky sex!
The cover: was only decided on many years later when decided to publish. It was changed to the one it’s got now only a couple of weeks before publication. Though it doesn’t have the seductive appeal and perfection of professionally-designed covers, I liked the human touch of an ordinary woman staring out across the water, alone and contemplative, rather like the main character in her crisis, when she needed space, time and peace down by the water’s edge to think about it all.

Acknowledgment: It helps if you have someone to bounce your ideas and writing off. It would be wrong and misleading to sketch out my writing process without acknowledging the contributions, both large and small, of my partner to that process. What started out as a collaborative venture soon turned into an actual adventure. It was a productive way of working, not only through stimulating the creative process, but also when it triggered discussions that drew in views and suggestions from an opposite-sex angle that ‘rounded off’ something with a bit more credibility perhaps to what was essentially, originally, a figment of imagination from my own perspective.

That said, not all suggestions were accepted. On the one hand, particularly valuable ones were to swap the setting for the blind date to a gallery (a place where they were faced with controversial art that exposed particular views and feelings) instead of a less heated discussion on sexism in a bar; doing basic research uncovering the ‘raskols’ in Papua New Guinea which later was used to provide a credible basis for one character's significant transformation of character; and to include the main character trapped in a maze at some point (a metaphor of her situation in life) which was perfect for use in the rather gothic climax.

On the other hand, we disagreed about suspending the heroine from the rafters, etc. (I went ahead as I thought it was a powerful image under that spotlight and a revelation on the Jekyll and Hyde nature of the other character); and on the relationship between that particular character and 'the other woman' (I wanted it to be more than one of convenience based on pure S&M and one much more rounded and complex to accord with the main character's perceptions and reactions since the whole story was to be only that experienced through her own eyes, thoughts, feelings and actions).

After the draft of Hard Rain was finished in 1999, my partner suggested I write a sequel, only this to be the story from the perspective of the male protagonist with the added bonus of his complex relationship with 'the other woman' thrown in. I was not keen however, partly because it would have meant getting to grips with the psychology and emotions of a complex character having relationships with two quite different women (not to mention having to concoct a much wider display of his flair for sadistic use of them!), and partly because I was already occupied with another novel very different from Hard Rain, which is not finished and which means a lot to me.

Creating people, places, and events /reaching out to others/ escaping into fantasy / the challenge / personal achievement / using words to their fuller potential / fun - sometimes!

See Q.1