Published 15th October 2022 by Bad Press Ink.
From the cover of the book:
PART TWO OF TAKE HER BACK TRILOGY - The Child Left in the Dark is the follow-up to the stunning, The Girl with the Green Eyes.There’s something growing in her that’s going beyond us. Some sort of darkness, a confidence… the more it emerges, the more she seems to just... disappear.
It has been six months since Bella and her daughter Ariana were driven into a desperate flight across the country. Six months since the explosive events at the Futura Laboratory changed their lives forever. Bella must live with the impossible decision she made back in the autumn, even if the consequences are monstrous. She will do whatever it takes to keep Ariana safe, even from herself. Especially from herself.
Ariana, meanwhile, cannot escape the nightmares of the terrifying creatures she saw at the lab. Struggling with the reality of a life out of the shadows, Ariana cannot help but feel more alone than ever. Except for the voices, of course. The whispers of a creeping, dark blankness growing within her. Everyone tells her she is normal. Everyone is lying.
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As part of the blog tour to mark the publication of The Child Left in the Dark, it is my pleasure to bring you J. M. Briscoe's thoughts on writing the sequel to The Girl with the Green Eyes.
It was the summer of 2020 and the world was mid-crisis. I’d spent the first lockdown rereading and editing the manuscript of The Girl with the Green Eyes, my first soft sci-fi novel which I’d written around 18 months earlier and then shelved while I’d gone about the business of having a baby and trying to keep him (and his two big sisters) alive, etc. Still, despite my falling back in love with the world I’d created and then left my characters somewhat precariously in for two years, I almost didn’t write The Child Left in the Dark at all. Not because of any writers’ block. Not even because of having three kids and a mind that only just seemed to be stumbling out of the fog of baby-brain. No, it was because I am a pragmatist and, to be perfectly honest, I didn’t want to plough my heart, soul and precious hours of baby’s naptime into book two if book one was going to be a non-starter. I’d tried to acquire a literary agent to represent The Girl with the Green Eyes, but while several were initially interested and many were complimentary, none of them felt strongly enough to take it on. It’s a brutally difficult industry to crack – particularly when you’re not a celebrity and haven’t much of a social media following – and I was competing with the masses of other bored creatives who’d decided to try their hand at writing a novel during the pandemic. Not to mention the tricky business of trying to fit my story into a genre box – it’s hard trying to sell a ‘sci-fi which doesn’t feel like sci-fi’ mother/daughter thriller to those who only see ‘sci-fi’ and automatically think ‘no’. I did consider shelling out for a professional appraisal, but with no guarantee of publication at the end (and for a 100k manuscript these services can run into the thousands), I didn’t know if it would be money down the drain.
Then I got an email which changed everything. ‘You’re on the list’ was the subject matter. Assuming I’d inadvertently signed myself up to some mailing list for mum-tum exercises or rainbow dungarees or something similar, I duly clicked on the email, ready to scroll to the unsubscribe button. That’s when I saw the name of my novel. I checked the sender; it was The Bridport Prize and The Girl with the Green Eyes was on the longlist. It changed everything for me. I didn’t win (but I did make the top 20 of 1600 entrants). I didn’t suddenly gain 5000 new followers on social media. There wasn’t a barrage of literary agents flooding my inbox with offers to sign me up immediately. But I did start writing book two, The Child Left in the Dark. The fact that somewhere out there a professional judge had seen enough potential in my story to include it on that list meant so much to me (and clearly still does because here I am, two years later, still banging on about it). It was the boost I’d needed to put fingers to keys, drag my mind back to where I’d left my poor characters at the end of Green Eyes and type the words: ‘She wakes herself screaming’.
I wrote a chapter a day while my eldest two kids were at school and nursery and the one-year-old napped. It wasn’t always straightforward. It’s a difficult balance to strike between subtle reminders of book one and spending swathes of narrative retelling the whole preceding plot (which, as a reader, I really hate). There were moments when I wondered if this book was exciting enough (there is less action, on the whole, than Green Eyes). But, once I’d finished my draft, left it to settle and then gone back to reread and edit, I realised that actually, this was more than just the sequel to The Girl with the Green Eyes. This book had twists that swooped and clenched you deeper. It had elements and direction that I hadn’t even planned (including an unexpected love interest). It had its own story; its own delivery. And, if anything, I loved it even more than its predecessor.
I had finished the first draft and was well into the editing process of The Child Left in the Dark by the time I eventually signed with my publisher, BAD PRESS iNK, to release The Girl with the Green Eyes. And thus began a new and exciting journey which found me wanting to say, to many a reader, many a time, ‘Just you wait… you will not believe what happens next.’
I’m so glad that the time has finally come to share it. Of course, this being a trilogy, it’s not the end either. As to book three, well. I think you know what I’m going to say.J.M. Briscoe
The Child Left in the Dark is available to buy now in paperback and ebook formats.
Thank you to Grace Pilkington Publicity for inviting me to be part of this blog tour.
About the author:
J M Briscoe has also written a YA novel, THE THING ABOUT AMELIA, which was long-listed for the 2016 Mslexia Children's Novel Competition. She currently writes a light-hearted parenting blog called Fearless Worrier (www.jmbriscoe.com) and has an author website: www.jmbriscoe.co.uk. J M Briscoe lives in Berkshire with her husband, three children and two fairly indifferent cats.
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