One Hundred Names (Special Edition)

would hear the character’s voice in my head and they would become so real I would be compelled to tell their story. It would be the story where the first few sentences would already be forming in my head, just begging to be written. It was the
One Hundred Names
idea which wouldn’t leave me alone but I had a problem; I had the great idea, but I didn’t have the characters.
    I wasn’t ready to write my novel and I only had six months to the deadline. I’ll be honest, I wondered if there would be a book at all by June. January came and I still couldn’t begin the novel, so I began writing a novella called
Herman Banks and the Ghostwriter
. That took me a month to write and while I was concentrating on that – a very different project for me that funnily enough is exactly what I needed to help me work out what I was going to do next – somewhere the wheels were in motion for my next novel. Some people ask me what they should do when they draw a blank, when they get writer’s block. I used to tell them I’d take a break, I’d empty the dishwasher, do the washing, busy myself so that I was actively doing something but all the while my brain would be still mulling it over. It’s the equivalent of giving someone peace and quiet while they try to remember something. Writing
Herman Banks and the Ghostwriter
was my equivalent. I had to give my mind some peace and quiet. Ironically,
Herman Banks and the Ghostwriter
is a story about a man with writer’s block and the lengths he’d go to in order to write a novel.
    That’s when I had my eureka moment.
    I had an idea but no characters. On the other hand I had lots of characters and stories that I’d been working on for years but which had never been developed enough to become novels of their own. A-ha.
    I had six characters that I had been thinking about for years, characters that I had wanted to write as short stories, or develop as television shows, or write as novels. I was so familiar with them and their stories I suddenly realized this is what they were for. I would focus on them.
    They were my one hundred names.
    I started writing in February 2012 and I finished in April 2012. I have never written a book so quickly in my life.
PS I Love You
had been written, obsessively, through hibernation, in three months and I thought I would never achieve that again. But it happened and I think the reason it could happen was that I had spent years living with all of these characters, I understood them so much already, it was just a matter of writing them down.
    What was so unusual for me was placing them together in the same story. There is a scene where Kitty introduces the characters to each other, which is unusual for her because she is seeing them together for the first time. Different people from her life all come together in one room. I felt as she felt, they were all from different stories in my mind, from different notebooks, created years apart, and here I was introducing them to each other. It almost felt like they were reaching out of one notebook to shake the hand of a character in another. It was kind of magical. It would be like putting all of my previous characters from novels in a room together. What would happen if I put Holly, Rosie, Elizabeth, Sandy, Joyce, Lou, Tamara and Lucy all in a room together? It would be bizarre – but special – and that’s how it felt for me.
    As for writing the first line of my novel? I told my neighbour I was pregnant. I hadn’t told many people. She said she was like a graveyard. Secrets went in but nothing ever came back out. I’d never heard it before and I loved it. That morning I knew I had my first line for the novel. Constance became The Graveyard, Kitty’s trusted mentor and friend.

    How did you come about creating Mary-Rose and Sam, and Sam’s unusual tendency to want to constantly propose to her in a public setting? What motivated Sam, do you think?
    My husband and I never had a proposal moment, we were together for ten years and just decided to get married. It was a joint decision, nothing like in the movies, just a conversation one day where we finally agreed on
when
we were going to do it, because
if
had stopped being a question. When we were on honeymoon in Venice, getting dolled up for our first night out for dinner, I thought that it would be funny if we had our proposal that night. Just because we never had one. Then my mind started thinking about it – what if somebody overheard us and thought it