Dual Narrative
Local Girl Missing wasn’t an easy book to write but it was definitely interesting and kept me on my toes. So many times, I had to go back through each chapter and check the clues I had left for the reader, making sure I kept the narrative and plot as tight as possible. It’s a difficult balance making sure the reader has enough clues to keep them interested and turning those pages without giving too much away and divulging a spoiler before the big reveal at the end.
I always enjoy writing in dual narrative. For all that it chops and changes the writing style, it also allows both me as the writer and the person reading the book to travel to different times and places, making sure we get a more balanced insight into the mind of the characters. Not that all the characters are well balanced. Far from it! They carry their own emotional baggage that interferes with their everyday lives. On a superficial level, they all appear quite well adjusted and composed but once we scratch beneath the surface, their flaws begin to appear, small cracks that increase exponentially until they become too big to hide.
The matter of mistaken identity is another theme in Local Girl Missing. From the get-go it is apparent that the captor has kidnapped her victims as a replacement for people who was once dear to her. I adore creating damaged characters, writing about unhinged individuals who will go to any lengths to get what they want. There are so many possibilities to explore, so many facets to their personalities, and the fact they wear two faces – one to their captives, a monstrous being capable of inflicting so much hurt and damage, and another to the world they face everyday, chatting to neighbours, going to work, doing all the things that normal people do. Think Ted Bundy and Josef Fritzl, two horribly deranged people who managed to fool everybody around them for so many years. These people are out there. They walk among us. They have their own narrative, their own warped reasons for doing what they did. In Local Girl Missing, mistaken identity is the reason, even though deep down, the person responsible knows that the women she has taken are not who she thinks they are. Her mind is fragile, her thoughts out of kilter. Only she knows why she took those women, her broken mind and fractured past a thing that creeps up on her until eventually, she is no longer able to distinguish between what is real and what isn’t.
You can pick up a copy of Local Girl Missing today: 
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