Blacklands

Author’s Note

BLACKLANDS WAS NEVER INTENDED TO BE A CRIME NOVEL. I thought it was going to be a very small story about a boy and his grandmother.

The spark for it came when I saw the mother of a long-murdered child on TV and started to wonder about the impact of crimes such as Avery’s, how they affect people for years, lifetimes—maybe even generations.

I thought: If I were the grandson of a woman whose son had been murdered, how would that affect me? What would my life be like? Immediately I got an overwhelming sense of the sad fragmentation of a family, which went beyond all my preconceptions of forgiveness and noble suffering. Already thinking as a twelve-year-old boy, my only question then was: How can I change this?

As Steven, writing to Avery for help seemed entirely logical. As Avery, manipulating this seeker of truth for my own gratification was a cruel pleasure. From there, the feeling that this could all spiral out of control drove Blacklands into unexpectedly dark territory.

This is a work of the imagination. My characters are not based on any real person, living or dead, and any similarity to actual persons is entirely coincidental. However, Avery’s escape over the Longmoor wall is inspired by an actual prison break which took place in 2003.