Author Sam Blake on creating an explosive story for her latest YA thriller, Something’s About to Blow Up . . .
At the end of May my second YA thriller Something’s About to Blow Up hit the bookshelves, quickly becoming the Eason teen pick for June. When any book comes out I do lots of interviews, which this time included the Six O’clock show and another author goal ticked off my notional list – I’ve always wanted to be one of those TV guests who gets to eat the food the on-screen chef cooks!
Something’s About to Blow Up, is set in the same world as Something Terrible Happened Last Night – Raven’s Hill Girls Day and Boarding School in the south Dublin town of Kilmurray Point. It’s a thriller, so plot is vital, but as with my adult novels, it’s very much character driven, and Frankie O’Sullivan, Sorcha Bennett and Jessica McKenna (Jess) are fantastic characters to write. When an explosion in the chemistry lab lands six girls in hospital, my investigative team want to know what happened, and why – theories abound, summarised in Sorcha’s WHAT WE KNOW Google doc which is updated and discussed as the story unfolds.
When I started thinking about creating the world of Raven’s Hill, I wanted to ensure that all readers felt represented, whatever their family situation, ethnic background, gender orientation or skillset. Frankie comes from a family of five and her parents run a hotel, they work long hours and Frankie and her brothers are very self-sufficient because they have to be. They all work in the hotel, and while Raven’s Hill is a private school, Frankie is a day pupil, so she goes home to the often utter chaos of the Berwick Park Hotel every evening. Sorcha is a competitive swimmer, determined to ace her leaving cert and get into the national swim team which is why she’s moved to Raven’s Hill, so she has time to study and train in their pool. She’s Frankie’s cousin and her parents are scientists who are always away at conferences. Her elder sister Beth is at Edinburgh University. Sorcha and Beth both love maths and science. Jess is English, an only child, and lost her mum to cancer the year before Something Terrible Happened Last Night began. She has lived all over the world, but most recently in London. Her Dad is a conflict journalist who travels a lot so it made sense for them to move closer to her Irish grandmother and to a school where she can board if he gets delayed in another part of the world.
Because this is a school story, it has a big cast – Maeve and Tara, Ella, Amber and Georgia all reappear in Something’s About to Blow Up, plus new characters Becky, Greg and Mackenzie. It was important to keep all the characters distinctive so the reader could follow who was who. They each have their own look and personality, and I tried to make sure that their names were all distinctive too with different initials and different sounds.
Something’s About to Blow Up is told from eight different points of view (I know, yikes!) plus there are text messages from unknown sources, Ravefess the Raven’s Hill School confession site features with posts commenting and speculating on events as they unfold, and there are anonymous diary entries. When I came up with the idea, I liked the idea of a locked room type scenario where the girls have to figure out what happened – they are all stuck in the hospital, but on different wards so pick up the story in different ways. As well as the different points of view and the main plot (the explosion) there are three key subplots that dovetail with the main story. Set over 24hours, the threat continues as the clock ticks.
In order to keep everything on track, at the top of every new chapter (all of which are very short to keep the pace moving), I put the name of the character whose chapter it was (the point of view character), the location (which ward they were on) and the time. Rumour is already rife surrounding the sharing of intimate photos, and the gossip is flying when the explosion happens. Someone has made a threat that if certain photos aren’t sent to them within twenty-four hours, awful things will happen – the gossips on Ravefess speculate that this means they will be published on the internet. The twenty four hour count down is at the top of each chapter as well with the aim of increasing the tension still further.
In Something Terrible Happened Last Night, the internet is used as a force for good – the girls use social media to piece together the shocking events surrounding Katie’s party, but in Something’s About to Blow Up we see the internet’s dark side. What you see if not always the truth.
In many of the interviews I’ve done I’ve been asked about connecting with the teens who feature in the story. I did a lot of research, talking to teenagers and asking about their thoughts and worries. Their answers really demonstrated how much personal change there is between 14 and 18 – the 14 year olds I spoke to were worried about bullying in class and social media – who was following who/had blocked who/who was messaging who. The 18 year olds were focused on climate change.
For all of them, it was clear that social media and the internet was an extension of their lives, it’s part of who they are, like a language they all share. In contrast, my peers see it as a tool, a method of communication, but not in the same way. It was important for me to get that relationship right.
Gender fluidity is also completely accepted by teens, and I wanted to ensure that the girls in Raven’s Hill reflected the real world of school today.
Despite all the different points of view, I didn’t plot out Something’s About to Blow Up in detail, and between the first and second drafts I changed the antagonist and added a subplot. The story evolved as I wrote. Writing a list summarising the point of view in each chapter and the major events was vital to getting the balance right, and once I had the parts assembled, I moved chapters around and added detail to ensure they all gelled, and that there was an even balance of voices. It’s easy with this many voices to forget about someone for six chapters, potentially jerking the reader out of the story when they suddenly pop up again!
Something’s About to Blow Up is in shops now – I’m thrilled that it’s being loved by my adult readers as well as finding new teen readers, and it’s getting amazing reviews – phew!
(c) Sam Blake
Find out more about Sam Blake here.
Sam Blake is the number one bestselling author of both adult and YA crime and has been shortlisted for Irish Crime Novel of the Year multiple times. She runs the online mentoring and coaching group Writers Ink with her partner Maria McHale, assisting writers, at all stages of their careers, to success. Writers Ink has produced two bestsellers and multiple authors who have secured publication deals since its launch in 2019. Find out more about Writers Ink here.
About Something’s About to Blow Up by Sam Blake:
When an explosion rips through the chemistry lab at Raven’s Hill School and six girls are injured, the first thought is that it’s an experiment gone wrong. Then the guards start investigating and suspect a bomb. But if so – who was it targeting, and why? Ella, Becky, Maeve and Mackenzie are rushed to hospital, along with the injured Frankie and Sorcha, who team up with Jess to try to find out what actually happened. But what they discover is more sinister than even they could have imagined…
Order your copy online here.
