When I first had the idea for writing the story, back in August 2017, I didn’t have any specific themes in mind. I just knew I wanted to write a story set in and around St. Agnes, Perranporth and Newquay on the North Cornwall coast. 

My initial step in developing this was to ask myself what kind of stories might happen there, or more specifically what kind of story would interest me.

Given the region’s tales of smugglers and wreckers, St. Agnes’s surfer nickname (the Badlands) and the general wild and rugged feel of the place, it seemed the perfect setting for a crime or thriller novel. But I had (and still have) zero interest in writing a police procedural or a detective novel. 

Rather, I wanted my protagonist to be a normal (well, normal-ish) person, not a cop or a journalist or a private detective. I wanted them to be someone with a vested interest in the tale, someone with a personal stake in what happened. 

That suggested to me someone searching for either a lover, a friend or a family member who had gone missing or who had died in mysterious circumstances.

In the end I went with family member, specifically a sister, and that in turn led to family, and the impact that they have on each other, becoming one of the major themes of the book.

All of the three primary characters, Willow, Goddard and Raven are motivated and shaped by their family history, but it’s Willow who’s story is most driven by family conflict.

It shaped her childhood, became the reason why she ran away and, when her sister reaches out for help, is the reason she comes running home.

Family is also the reason why Willow has changed her name. Her birth name is Megan, but after she ran away from home, she rejected the name her mother had given her and started calling herself Willow, a nickname given to her by her best friend, Zoe. 

As Willow ran from place to place, she morphed into the tattooed and red- dreadlocked hippie-with-attitude that we meet in the opening pages of the book. 

When she is drawn back to St. Agnes, she’s coming back as Willow, not Megan, and her continuing rejection of her childhood name reflects another of the book’s themes; identity. 

Who we are and who we say we are can sometimes be very different things, and in Badlands all of the principle cast either hide behind an assumed identity (Willow and Raven) or else hide their true nature behind their public image (Goddard). 

The setting itself also has an assumed identity; the Badlands, a name given to the surf-breaks around St. Agnes by the original surfer crews. 

For me, the nickname for the place is perfect, because whilst it can be beautiful and scenic, the rip-tides and the ocean can be wild and deadly, and the juxtaposition between beauty and chaos reflected the characters and the story perfectly.

The concepts of identity and family are reflected in the main theme of the book. 

It’s a lesson stated by several of the characters as they interact with Willow on her quest to find her sister; “you can’t run away forever.”

Whilst Badlands is a dark thriller, full of deception, betrayal and conspiracy, it is also a story of how Willow learns to come to terms with who she is, with what her parents have done to her, and how she needs to change to find out what really happened to her sister. 

Badlands, a dark Cornish thriller, is out now!