Thank you for reading Echoes of Guilt, and I really do hope you have enjoyed DI Dani Stephens’s latest adventures and trials! I also want to say a big thank you to everyone at Hera, Canelo and Darley Anderson who helped to get this book from concept to final product.
Dani is a character who continues to intrigue me, and I’ve had a lot of fun developing her over the last few books, even if she would probably not describe the experience as ‘fun’ for herself! People often ask me how I come up with my ideas for characters and plots, and a lot of the time I find it really hard to answer, because the reality for me is that a character or book rarely comes in one single eureka moment. Rather, I’ll have multiple sparks over a period of time, which I slowly play with in my head until I feel I have the sufficient bare bones of a book to make a start on drafting.
Often those bare bones are very bare indeed, sometimes they’re a little more fleshed out. Echoes of Guilt, though, was a little different for me, because I can very firmly pinpoint where I had the conceptual idea.
With two young sons, me and my wife rarely get holidays just for the two of us anymore, but last autumn we managed a much needed childfree break to Bucharest in Romania. Neither of us had ever been to Romania before, and the few days we spent there were absolutely fascinating, both in terms of the people we met and the place and its incredible history (particularly the rise and fall of communism, the relative recency of which is still such a big and relevant event in the country’s history).
It was on that holiday that I decided I wanted to bring a bit of Romania into my next Dani book, and while sitting in the hotel lounge one afternoon I began to develop the plot for Echoes of Guilt while I read up on Dracula. Now, of course everyone knows of Dracula, but I wanted to bring this element out in a crime thriller without it descending into schlock horror, without it descending into the overtly supernatural. I hope you enjoyed these elements of the story, and that you found them as creepy as I tried to make them - and if you did, then you’ve got our trip to Romania, and the multiple measures of Romanian plum schnapps I had there to thank for the inspiration!
Once again, thank you for taking the time to read my work (and this letter). I’m always grateful for reviews, if you could spare a few minutes to write and post one online. I also welcome direct comments and feedback, and you can reach me via my website (where you can also sign up to my newsletter), and on social media, links as follows:
Website: www.robsinclairauthor.com
Twitter: @rsinclairauthor
Facebook: fb.me/robsinclairauthor
All the best
Rob Sinclair