Saturday 20 December 2014

M. JONATHAN LEE CHATS ABOUT HIS LATEST BOOK - THE PAGE


What's The Page about?
The Page is a story of a man holidaying alone for the first time. On his first day he is by the pool, when the wind strips a book of its pages and one sticks to his chest. To his horror, he realises the text on the page describes the exact events leading up to the death of his wife. The book becomes a race between the lead character finding the book before his family find out the truth.

Sounds intriguing, what gave you that idea?
Amazingly, the exact same thing happened to me when on holiday in Vegas. An old book was stripped from across the pool, scattering in all directions. There were pages covering the surface of the pool and one stuck to me. I read it and found it was some Mills and Boon romance book. It got me thinking though and soon The Page began to form in my mind.

Your first novel, The Radio was nationally shortlisted, how difficult was it writing the follow up?
The Radio was a story that had formed in my mind over many years and took four to write. Sitting down to write The Page was unusual because there was that extra pressure to deliver again and this time more quickly. I wrote The Page over twelve months but the final few months really affected me.

In what way?
The Radio had a huge twist and so does The Page. I wanted to go one step further with The Page and overtly give away the ending throughout. Therefore I designed fifteen clues to give the ending to the reader on a plate without them even knowing it. Towards the end and certainly in editing, I began to suffer from sleepless nights and a huge crisis of confidence in relation to that and whether I was going too far with the project.

How do you feel now?
I am as pleased as any author could be with their work. Clues remain throughout however and there will be a huge competition where I intend to give away royalties for the first reader to pick them all out.

What's next?
I want a break from "The The" trilogy. The two books may seem quite unrelated but there is a dual story being weaved through them. My next novel “A Tiny Feeling Of Fear orThe Two Sides of One.” is totally unrelated. The only similarity is another twist.  I am also very excited about the future of The Radio as we are currently negotiating film rights. Watch this space!

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