NK Chats To… Jackie Carreira
Hi Jackie. Thank you for bringing your birthday blitz tour to Novel Kicks. Can you tell us about your book, Notebook Number Nine and what inspired it?
Notebook Number Nine is the story of a young woman who has an epiphany one day and realises that everything is a lie! Not just in her own life, but everywhere she looks. She decides that she’s had enough and determines to undertake a journey of self-discovery and a search for real truth. The problem is, she’s just a ‘normal’ person. She can’t afford to escape to a monastery up a mountain or a beach in Bali. Can just anyone find out what’s actually real? Or is it only for those who can afford it? I’ve always had an inquisitive mind. I was one of those children that constantly asked questions that irritate the hell out of grown-ups. I read too many so-called ‘self-help’ books over the years that made no sense to me and didn’t help at all. I grew up on a council estate in Hackney, and I wanted to write about a journey of self-discovery for those of us who still have to pay the gas bill. It’s a novel that asks a lot of deep questions, but with a good dose of humour and common sense. Ultimately, it’s a human story full of hope.
What is your favourite word and why?
I’m not sure why, but I love onomatopoeic words (that sound like what they’re describing), like ‘Boing!’ and ‘Thwack!’ and ‘Sizzle!’
What’s your typical writing day like? Do you have any writing rituals – coffee? Silence?
Coffee – yes! Silence – only when I get to the editing stage. My favourite writing spaces are coffee shops, especially ones in train stations, so the background noise often helps. You can catch some fascinating snippets of conversations.
Which fictional character would you like to meet and why?
by 
Novel Kicks Writing Room: Things Left Behind
Welcome back to the Novel Kicks Writing Room.
Today’s writing exercise is all about “the thing left behind”.
Write a short piece of fiction inspired by this sentence:
When they opened the door, everything was exactly as they had left it—except for one thing.
Write for 20 minutes.
Use either first person or third person.
Set the scene in one location.
Include at least one object that carries emotional significance.
Let the reader discover what has changed gradually.
End with a revelation, decision, or unanswered question.
by NK Chats To & Extract: Noah Christopher
Hi Noah, thank you so much for joining me today. Can you tell us about your book, The Confessor?
Absolutely! I’ve always had in the back of my head that it would be fun to write a book one day, and after years of thinking about it “one day” finally became “today” and I just jumped in. My favorite author has always been John Sandford ever since I first read Rules of Prey many years ago. I love the alternating POV chapters between hero and villain, so I knew I wanted to use a similar concept while still making the book my own and something truly unique.
That eventually became The Confessor. The book started when I came up with the concept for the killer, a man who is tired of all the injustice in the world and starts making people confess to their crimes before he kills them. Then, as I wrote on the dedication page, I wanted our hero to feel like a distant cousin of Lucas Davenport from Sandford’s Prey series, with a healthy dose of myself thrown in as well. Those were the building blocks, and everything else fell in around them.
The hero and the killer, oddly enough, start to feel like two sides of the same coin, and the line that divides them starts to blur towards the end. It’s a book that weighs some pretty deep questions of morality and justice…and who gets to make those decisions. My goal is that it’s fun to read and takes you on a wild ride, but then sticks with you a bit after you’ve finished it.
What are the challenges when writing in a series? What are the most important things you need to consider?
The first challenge wasn’t writing a series—it was figuring out how to write a book in the first place! I’ve always been a writer by trade in many different mediums, but I’d never written a full book. The whole thing was a massive learning curve. I just had to learn as I went, and as I wrote, I gradually found the rhythm of the book and became much more confident in what worked.
I also have the first six chapters of Book 2 in the series written, and I may be biased, but I think it’s even better than Book 1. Now the challenge is keeping the continuity straight, advancing the characters and raising the stakes while still making each book satisfying on its own. I’m learning and growing as I go, and that’s half the fun of it.
What is your typical writing day like? Do you have any writing rituals like needing coffee before you begin? Needing silence to write—that sort of thing?
I had to learn and develop this as I went too, but eventually the pattern I fell into, which I really enjoyed, was working in 2-3 hour blocks about two or three times a day. Any longer and I found I needed to clear my head, but any shorter and I found it hard to really get into the zone and hit a creative groove.
I like to go for a run or walk or swim in between, and those are often some of my most creative times. More ideas for this book came to me while out on a run or while swimming than at any other time. I often found I couldn’t put the book down, couldn’t get it out of my head, so while swimming I’d constantly be trying to solve dead ends I had reached, or figure out how to shift the plot in the direction we needed to go in a realistic way.
And yes, I need pure silence to write. I am definitely not one of those background-noise people, and I could never write somewhere like a Starbucks. It’s home in my quiet office for me. My final routine came at the end of the day. After I’d worked on the book, I would put it down, clear my head, go for a walk, eat dinner, do whatever else was going on with the family, and then, after I’d fully reset and cleared my mind, I would read with fresh eyes the new section I’d produced that day before going to bed. That was always a real treat. Then…rinse and repeat the next day until the book was finally finished.
What’s your favourite word and why?
by Novel Kicks Fiction Friday: The Collector
Welcome to Fiction Friday, our weekly flash fiction challenge.
Here’s how it works:
Set a timer for five minutes and start writing
Keep going for as long as you can once the timer goes off
No editing allowed—raw writing only
When you’re finished, feel free to share in the comments (but there’s no pressure.)
Today’s prompt – The Collector
You inherit your uncle’s apartment and discover the walls are completely covered with photographs. Not hung or framed, but taped, pinned, and glued in overlapping layers that go back decades. Each photo shows a different person, none of whom you recognize.
On the kitchen table is a single notebook. The entries are cryptic:
by Book Extract: Heartless By Brian Fitzgerald
I’m happy to be welcoming Brian Fitzgerald to Novel Kicks as we shine a light on his book, Heartless.
Ten years of frustration and heartbreak caring for his son John, born with a catastrophic heart defect, have convinced Rick Morrow that the world is stacked against his family. And on what should be the best day of their life — the day when John will finally get a new heart – an even worse nightmare begins, when the helicopter carrying the heart crashes, destroying the heart and the hopes of the Morrow family.
Rick’s heartbreak turns to rage as he begins to suspect that the accident was no accident at all. His pursuit of the truth puts him on a collision course with the giant Cera Corporation and the powerful family that runs it, who have an agenda of their own and will stop at nothing to make it come true. The escalating conflict threatens Rick’s reputation, his safety and even his marriage. It reaches its gut-wrenching climax with Rick and his wife Mary facing and even more terrible question; will they sacrifice all they believe in to save their own son, at a cost almost too high to imagine?
Brian has shared an extract with us today. We hope you enjoy.
*****beginning of extract*****
One
The white lines crawled across the green displays of the monitors, in rhythm with the steady sigh of the ventilator. The name ‘Matthew Richardson’ was written in black Sharpie on a piece of tape running at an odd angle below the squares of glass. The tape had been stuck to the machine in haste six months ago in the frenzy of the emergency room ten floors below. It had been put there during a desperate attempt to save the life of the young boy at the end of the tangle of the wires and tubes hanging between the machines and the bed. No one had seen any point in straightening it ever since.
by Book Club
