Jeffrey talks about Be Careful What You Wish For – Clifton Chronicles 4

Be Careful What You Wish For

I think a writer’s duty is to lull you into believing all is going well.

And then perhaps only in one sentence, you twist it the other way round.

Emma is now chairman of the Barrington shipping company, and they have built this remarkable liner, the SS Buckingham. And the Queen Mother launches it. Everything is going perfectly until we discover Don Pedro has decided to seek revenge.

And he travels to Ireland to see the IRA. I don’t think anybody’s life is in a straight line. If you look back over the years, you’ll see when things have been good, when things have been not so good, when things have been bad.

So I hope the reader feels when they read the Gryffindor Chronicles that, yes, it is a roller coaster, but they’ve experienced it at different levels themselves. No one expects everything to be perfect all the time.

And no one is going to achieve the things that Harry, Giles and Emma achieve without setbacks, without things that test them, without things that take them to the limit. That’s the fun. And getting over it and conquering it is the fun.

Of course, one of the three doesn’t always conquer it. The other two do pretty well. I think the problem with the series, which I’ve never experienced before, is that the next book is already in your mind.

You’re already wondering where Harry will go, where Giles will go, where Emma will go, where Lady Virginia will go, what they’re up to. And so you start already playing with ideas for the direction they will head, even before you finished that book.

And it gets harder and harder, of course, to make it so that it just couldn’t be expected, because millions of people are reading this book and they know me.

And they know how I write, and so they’re sort of sitting there waiting for it, but I still intend to follow.