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Anyone can write a book.

It’s an extravagant statement and not necessarily true, but often used by relatives when one of their numbers says they’ve written a book.

My brother said that when I told him I’d written one

I didn’t tell him that I’d written a dozen and published five, it seemed irrelevant at the time.

But as easy or hard as it may be to write one, writing a second is so much harder.

One of those five was ‘What sets us apart’, a story about a retired ‘problem solver’ who meets a girl, marries her, then she disappears.

It’s not long before he’s dragged back down the rabbit hole of ‘problem-solving’, this time a problem of his own.

Needless to say, there are endless espionage undertones along the way, meeting up with old friends, new friends, and enemies alike.

And his wife was not who he expected her to be, but something else entirely.

Oh, and just for good measure, the girl is the daughter of an old friend of his ex-boss, Prendergast, the legendary spymaster.

It was fun writing the first, weaving the story through many unexpected twists and turns, and arriving at a point where he finally gets her back.

Or has he?

As I was writing that first book, it occurred to me there was scope for a second book, a sequel, that could explore the theme that she might not be the real Susan.  After all, in the first, our hero has to contend with several clones that are almost impossible to separate from the real Susan.

What if he hadn’t rescued his Susan?

Thus, a sequel was born, “Strangers we’ve become’, and over the next month, I’m going to share the process to take it from the final draft to being published.