Guest Post: Tracy Bloom on writing No-One a Ever Has Sex in The Suburbs

It's very exciting for me today because, to celebrate the release of her latest novel, I have Tracy Bloom on the blog. She has written about writing No-One Ever Has Sex in The Suburbs, which is the sequel to No-One Ever Has Sex on A Tuesday. This is a great book and Tracy has written a great post as well. The Book came out yesterday and you can read my review from Monday (I loved it!)

When I wrote NO-ONE EVER HAS SEX ON A TUESDAY, I had no idea if it would get published let alone become a no1 bestselling e-book so to be writing a follow up because readers have asked for it is quite frankly an unbelievably amazing outcome.

However I was very aware that with that comes enormous responsibility. People have bought into these characters I’ve created so whatever happens next has to be true to them whilst just as gripping as what happened in the first book.

Fortunately when I started writing I discovered I had two things on my side. Ben and Katy’s relationship wasalways complex from the start, what with the age difference and with neither of them overly keen oncommitment. The likelihood was always going to be thatlife wasn’t going to run smoothly post the arrival of a baby and their decision to get married.  I soon realised it was obvious what they would do next. They would have to swap roles given the difference in their earning power but this relatively unusual situation would create as many problems as it would solve.

Then I discovered something else. Katy and Ben’s best mates, Daniel and Braindead just wrote themselves.Perhaps subconsciously I’d developed two characters that infact I would like to be friends with. Both entirely different but both very funny and brutally honest in their own way. Writing them was truly like catching up with the long lost pals where you just slip into your old ways and carry on where you left off. It was a revelation and really drove home the importance of developing strong characters from the outset.

My other concern was making sure that you could enjoy this book without having to read the first one. I found that actually it was fun working out how to introduce these people in a way that would grab new readers whilst reminding existing readers what was it about them that appealed to them in the first place.

Of course as with any book it didn’t always run smoothly.  Always about half way through a book I have a crisis of confidence, especially with this one given it had to live up to high expectations. But I battled past that and now it’s out there and so far it’s getting a great reaction. If all goes well then I’d very much like to find out what happens next and maybe write another one. But I think I’ll write about someone else first. Leave them all be. I think they’ve all been through enough for for a while!

Thanks to Tracy for the great post and now you should all go and get yourself better aquatinted with Ben and Katy and Braindead!