The Story Behind...

White-Hot!

 White-Hot! had a gradual progression from a small little seed of an idea into a book with characters who took on a life of their own!!!

It started with a film - which many of my stories often do - I see one I didn't like the ending of, or that had a scene in it that struck a chord in me - and an idea begins. With White-Hot! it started whilst watching Ladder 49 - the film with Joaquin Phoenix - that followed a Fire-fighter through training and onto the job and, well, I'll not ruin the story for you... Anyway, apart from the fact that my initial reaction was - oh yeah - Fire-fighters!!! - I was very struck by the scene early on in the film where a set of Dress Uniformed Fire-fighter's has to come to someone's' house to tell them a loved one has died. How awful must that be? And it made me think about what it was like for the family of that person and how it would have changed their world...

 Now we all experience loss at some stage, for me it was early on when I lost my Father in my teens - so we all know how traumatic it can be. So running on the theory of 'write what you know' - I knew I had emotions in there I could draw on. And hence, the seeds for White-Hot! were sown.

Then I thought conflict - a single line in the Fire-fighter series Rescue Me  gave me another piece of inspiration - so I had Shane's conflict started. Then I thought again about the scene in the film and I wondered what it would be like for the daughter of a Fire-fighter who died - and I had Finn's conflict started... Add some comedy in the form of Finn's disastrous love life and some Bridget Jones styled big-pants and we had the beginnings of a story I knew I was gonna love writing... Then once I started, they took on personalities of their own and the story flew... You gotta love it when that happens...

Hence Shane and Finn’s story came to life…

      Alright - So this picture helped...

It's so important to have a hero picture that inspires I feel. And with this one, we had Shane. We had the look, we had the Fire-Fighter outfit and this was enough with the conflict I already had in place to lend life to my hero. And he remained Shane until I got the cover - The cover is just so addictive and so right that that guy IS Shane in my mind now.. Truly!!! GOOD JOB ART DEPT!!!

Location when writing this book:

Ahhh... Now this one was one of the many I have done since I became a Full Time Writer... Which I knew meant I was going to have a  year of virtual seclusion... I have a plan, kinda, well in theory you see - To write away like a hermit in a cave for a year and then next year to travel to as many conferences as I can as my treat for being a hermit so long...

So this book was written in my little log cabin, in the middle of the woods not far from the lakes... With my horses by my door and cats asleep on the sofa...

The book was set in and around Dublin again and was the first book I had to do some serious research on - To see where the majority of my info came from click the picture above to browse the resources of the site for The Dublin Fire Brigade... Kudos for these brave men and their families and for Fire-fighting families world-wide I say!!! It takes a very special kind of people for this job and having done the research I can now see why Fire-fighter's are so popular as hero's... I only hope Shane lives up to the image...

Soundtrack playing: 

For the scene when Shane watches Finn sleeping we have a track from the  album 'Il Divo' by Il Divo....

Four amazing guys who can sing! Oh boy can they sing! And I've been to see them live in concert so I do NOT lie about this...

The scene with Shane and Finn was inspired by Track 5 and if you ever get the album and listen to it you'll understand completely - The words say it all.

You can even listen to a little snippet of it here   by scrolling down and clicking on 'Every Time I Look At You'.

*All Photographs are used to give a visible representation of the Authors 'view' and are in no way representative of the people or places in real life beyond the realms of the Authors imagination.