I’m in the middle of preparing author talks and workshops for ‘Danger Road‘, my cold-case crime thriller for middle-grade readers, launching on 1 July.
It’s always so interesting to sit down and consider exactly where ideas for stories come from and how they go from a glimmer of curiosity into a full-blown world, peopled by three-dimensional characters living their lives and getting themselves into various situations and scrapes. Trying to explain HOW that happens is not an easy task and it’s often only in looking back and preparing to talk about it with young readers that I’m able to clarify it for myself.
I’m not a person who creates ‘mood boards’ or uses Pinterest for visual prompts for stories. It’s just not how my subconscious operates. So it’s only when I’m creating a slide presentation for my author talks that I’m confronted by the reality that today’s students really like visuals. They’re a screen generation.
And so I find myself scratching around trying to find images that evoke the feeling of the book and the incidents or moments that inspired it.
These are some of the photos* I came up with for ‘Danger Road’.
None of these photos on their own shows up in the book. But all of them feed into the lives of Alex and Leo Hawkins and their friends in Grayton, the regional town in which they live. Creating a great mystery story is not just about the puzzle at the heart of the novel, but about the world in which that puzzle is set. And, for me, big worlds – be they fantasy or contemporary – are built on tiny details.
Alex and Leo set out to solve a 25-year-old hit-and-run cold case, and the details of that puzzle unfold along with the story. But the details of their daily lives and the lives of those around them are there from the opening sentence, building a picture word by word, of a place and the people who live there.
It’s a world of teenagers – then and now – in a place that’s not quite the city, not quite the coast, not quite the deep country. It’s about friendships and relationships – first love, family, the people around us – and about the difference between who we are and who the world thinks we are.
And it’s about the ripple effects of tragedy within a community.
Creating characters – and a crime
When I think back to the very early days of writing the novel – and the first glimmers began three or four years ago – I was thinking mostly of the characters of Alex and Leo – I wanted to write a detective story about two brothers.
I had written a junior fiction novel about two very different brothers – a book that will become one of my contributions to the Your Next Read series in 2027. But the kind of story I had in mind this time around was older, and definitely grittier.
So I started jotting down ideas, just in the usual way – opening a doc on my computer and throwing in half-considered sentences, links to articles or images. I knew I wanted two boys, close in age, but world’s apart in interest and personality.
In early 2023, author Adrian Beck and I had a brainstorming session about a book we thought we might write together – he was interested in writing a detective story as well. But he was working on something else, as was I, and we didn’t get much further than the brainstorm and talking about how much fun it would be to write something together.
Then in 2024, after I finished writing ‘Willow Bright’s Secret Plot’, I got in touch with Adrian and said, ‘I’m writing my own.’ He told me to ‘go for it’, and off I went.
Crime in a middle-grade novel can be difficult, so finding the right puzzle for the boys to solve took time to come into focus. But hit-and-run incidents are reported with horrifying regularity in Australian newspapers – there have been four in Sydney just in the past fortnight. These days they are mostly solved quickly, thanks to CCTV and other technology, but that hasn’t always been the case.
As someone who lives outside the major cities, I know that regional roads can be dark, lonely places, and the idea that a car, something we take for granted in everyday life, can also be a weapon is something that I did my best to make my own kids aware of as I was teaching them to drive.
That the decisions we make have consequences.
It’s an important reminder in a world where games like Grand Theft Auto have ‘mission’ called ‘Hit and Run’ and you can find clips on YouTube devoted to players ‘running over’ pedestrians.
Mostly, though, I wrote, in ‘Danger Road’, the kind of novel I love to read and have always loved to read. A pacy, plot-driven story with a thorny puzzle at its centre.
The first review in Books + Publishing (6 May) by Karys McEwen described ‘Danger Road’ as “… a compelling standalone mystery about a cold case, small-town secrets, and the difficulties surrounding sibling dynamics”, with “an emotional depth that always feels grounded and accessible.”
Reviewer Paul McDonald said, “I loved ‘Danger Road’ … [it] is compelling, the characters completely believable, the tone is dark and moody and the pace is thrilling. The novel is perfectly pitched for readers 10 plus, gritty but absolutely right for those readers transitioning towards teen fiction. Tait knows how to write for her young readers- and upper primary and lower secondary readers will fall so easily into the pages of ‘Danger Road’. … We need to be offering stories like this one that hook the reader from chapter 1. 
“
Fingers crossed that young readers will love it too!
Find out more about ‘Danger Road’ and buy it here.
*With thanks to B. Thomas-McKnight for the river shots
Are you new here? Welcome to my blog!
I’m Allison Tait, aka A.L. Tait, and I’m the author of 11 middle-grade novels, including adventure fantasy series such as The Mapmaker Chronicles, The Ateban Cipher, and the Maven & Reeve Mysteries, and contemporary stories including THE FIRST SUMMER OF CALLIE McGEE, WILLOW BRIGHT’S SECRET PLOT and DANGER ROAD (July 25).
You can find out more about me here, and more about my books here.
If you’re looking for book recommendations for young readers, join the Your Kid’s Next Read Facebook community, tune in to the Your Kid’s Next Read podcast and sign up for the Your Kid’s Next Read newsletter.
0 Comments