What makes someone write a novel – is it a story that’s just busting to be told? Is it a character in need of a history? Is it a feeling or emotion that needs a context?
There are many reasons, and in my case, the idea for Quiet World came to me while I was in the garden during the lockdown Spring of 2020.
It was the disconnect between two realities: on one side, the empty roads, the quiet, the spring weather, the birdsong and time to reflect. On the other hand, the fear and uncertainty that COVID was bringing to the world.
Of course, the media kept us all informed about the virus, but how different might it have been were we not constantly in touch with the world outside? What if we had no clue as to what had befallen the world?
The story of Quiet World takes that step further: what if, one morning, a man wakes up to a world robbed of all human sounds? How does he survive when, so far as he knows, he is the only human being left alive? What are the motivations for him to do anything at all other than curl up and die?
I had plenty of time to think about these things, as I took my regulated lock-down allowance of exercise, and in that time, a story began to unfold in my mind: the story of a man who shares his name with the very first man yet may very well be the last. And that’s when the work began, to get the story down in a form that, hopefully, people can relate to and enjoy reading.