Synopsis – The Aftermath
The Fire. The Fallout. The Aftermath.
Seamus Monaghan is still haunted by the unexplained fire that killed his vibrant but troubled wife, Carole, three years ago. Why was she taken from him in such a horrific way?
Dominic has protected his brother, Seamus, since they were orphaned as young boys. But is that bond strong enough to survive the fallout from the fire?
Andrea loves her fiancé Seamus, but will the fire’s aftermath destroy their future together?
Time moves on, but can the embers of the past ever be truly extinguished?
Purchase Link – https://amzn.to/3y5HcJZ
Author Bio
Paul Gitsham started his career as a biologist, working in such exotic locales as Manchester and Toronto. After stints as the world’s most over-qualified receptionist and a spell making sure that international terrorists and other ne’er do wells hadn’t opened a Junior Savings Account at a major UK bank (a job even less exciting than being a receptionist) he retrained as a Science Teacher. He now spends his time passing on his bad habits and sloppy lab-skills to the next generation of enquiring minds.
Paul has always wanted to be a writer and his final report on leaving primary school predicted he’d be the next Roald Dahl! For the sake of balance it should be pointed out that it also said “he’ll never get anywhere in life if his handwriting doesn’t improve”. Twenty five years later and his handwriting is worse than ever but millions of children around the world love him.*
*This is a lie, just ask any of the pupils he has taught.
Social Media Links –
Facebook www.facebook.com/dcijones
Twitter/X @dcijoneswriter
Instagram @paulgitsham
Author Q&A
1) The Aftermath is a domestic thriller, which is a departure from your usual DCI Warren Jones police procedurals. How was writing this different?
The biggest change was writing from the perspectives of the victims or perpetrators, rather than the police. In my Warren Jones novels, the police are the drivers of the narrative, and the reader essentially follows them. For The Aftermath, I switched everything 180 degrees. Instead of the police and the reader trying to interrogate the suspect or witness, looking for inconsistencies or lies, I had the interviewee trying to work out what the police know or suspect and attempting to divine their intent.
2) Who or what were your influences when writing this book?
I am a big fan of stories about (seemingly) nice people, in nice houses, with nice lives having horrible things happening to them! I love the probing of those lives and the steady peeling back of the layers. To name a couple of authors who are really good at this, Lisa Hall, C.L. Taylor and Mark Edwards immediately spring to mind. I also enjoy the one-off, limited series, TV dramas that are popular. The Jetty was very good, as was The Twelve.
3) Seamus’ wife Carole dies at the very beginning of the novel. Yet we still get to know her over the course of the book. How important was that to you?
There is something in fiction called ‘fridging’. The name is taken from an over-used literary trope called the ‘girlfriend in the refrigerator’, where a female character’s sole reason for existing is so that her early death gives her male partner a reason to go on their quest. That female character is barely given any development or page space. I decided that I wanted to avoid that. The reader has to care about Carole. They also need to understand why she made the choices she did. She is not a flawless character – far from it – but I wanted the reader to feel that they knew her in the same way they come to know Seamus, Dominic and Andrea.
4) We see much of the story through Andrea’s eyes. How did you craft that character?
Andrea is Seamus’ fiancée, three years after the fire. She is also heavily pregnant with twins. I really enjoyed writing her. She’s fun and witty, but also very clever. She, as much as Dominic, have helped Seamus recover from the death of Carole.
By making her pregnant, I also introduced a vulnerability. Like many women in her position, she doesn’t like that she is physically less capable than she used to be, but she is suddenly in the position of having to take into consideration the well-being of these two innocent lives. Similarly, Seamus and Dominic lean towards being over-protective. So when Andrea finds herself in potential danger, she is forced to think more carefully about her actions.
5) In addition to writing, you are also a secondary school science tutor. This seems an odd combination. Are there parallels between the two?
When I tell people I am a schoolteacher or tutor, everyone always assumes that I must be an English teacher! They are always surprised when I say I teach science. Yet writing crime novels and scientific research have a lot of parallels. First, there is the necessary creativity. Scientists, by definition, are creative and imaginative individuals. The leaps of intuition that have led us to new theories, or the creative approaches to proving those theories are no different to the skills utilised by writers of crime as we weave our fiendish tales. Furthermore, both science and crime writing are about solving puzzles. Before our fictional detective can proclaim their eureka moment, the writer has to have set up and solved the crime themselves, and also considered red herrings and alternative explanations. A logical, scientific mindset can help here.
6) Are you a disciplined writer, who meticulously plots everything before starting to write, or more of a ‘pantser’, flying by the seat of your pants?
I’m definitely a pantser. I wouldn’t say I don’t do any planning at all before I start, but it is rarely much more than a page of loosely-linked bullet points, often followed by several question marks. I usually have a starting premise, a couple of scenes I’d like to write and some red herrings or twists. For my series novels, I have rough character arcs planned ahead. For the standalone, my central characters had a couple of lines of description.
And then I start. However, I never stop adding to that planning document. As I progress, the ideas continue to flow and by the time I finish I probably have a similar amount of material in that planning document as writers who draw up a basic plan or outline.
I guess we all plan to some degree – we just do it at different times.
7) What are you currently working on?
Writing The Aftermath has really opened up my mind to the possibilities from standalones, and I loved writing a non-police-focused book for a change, so there will definitely be more standalone thrillers to come. That being said, I really enjoy getting to know characters over several books and I find the police procedure genre really intellectually stimulating, so I am currently developing a new police series. It’ll be very different from my DCI Warren Jones novels, so watch this space!
