Number One Bestselling Author

Remember My Name Out Now!

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Remember My Name started life when someone called me and didn’t hang up properly – it’s happened to us all, both making and receiving calls, and it started me thinking about what might be overheard in those crucial few seconds…

For Cressida Howard’s husband, Laurence, it’s a conversation with a woman that he really didn’t want his wife to listen in to, and it starts of chain of events that end in murder.

Thrilled to be No 1 in Eason stores nationwide!

Book ideas always start for me at two or three separate points, ‘light bulb’ moments that converge to form a story. They don’t always all arrive at the same time, some come years apart (like the ideas for my debut Little Bones), and they tend to swim around my head, swirling like moving images on a white board, before they begin to connect and form a story. The ideas can be anything – photographs, something I’ve read in the paper, a painting or a character who is demanding to be heard. It’s always a bit unnerving at the start of a book when the ideas are still only images and I can’t see how they connect at all – often there’s another piece needed to bring them together, and I’ve learned to trust the process and wait for that bit to arrive. Which sounds very practical until you factor in a deadline!

I’ve learned over the years to let the story percolate before I start making notes or researching characters. That story development time is just as important as the writing time, it’s where the connections are made and where unexpected things happen. It’s scary when you can’t see the story, but exhilarating when it starts to come togther.

After a chance conversation with my agent Simon Trewin about how much some major retailers know about our shopping habits, and what our online purchases could reveal about us to the wrong people, I began to wonder who could get hold of that information and how they might use it. And that started me thinking about blackmail, and cyber crime and what someone might have to gain from that sort of data. And that brought be back to the overheard conversation and a story began to form.

I love writing interesting female characters and with each new book I’m discovering strong new women’s voices, three-dimensional characters with lives and loves, hopes and fears who are as important as a twisty plot. I love writing women who know their own minds and go after what they want. Things aren’t always easy – without conflict there would be no story, but finding ways for them to overcome their problems is my plot.

One day I was on the Tube in London, sitting near a girl with amazing neon pink hair – shaved up both sides in a double undercut, and I literally had a lightbulb moment. She became the inspiration for a character called Brioni O’Brien, the tech expert who, in Remember My Name, Cressida calls to help her find out what’s going on in her husband’s life. But what Brioni and Cressida discover is far more complicated and dangerous than him ‘just’ having an affair, because Laurence has got into bed with some very dangerous people. And Laurence’s biggest mistake is underestimating the women in his life.

Remember My Name is a standalone psychological thriller, like Keep Your Eyes on Me, The Dark Room, and digital exclusive High Pressure, and like those books, its part of the Sam Blake world, so regular readers will recognise details like hotels, brands, and minor characters – I hope reinforcing the sense that they are stepping inside the ‘real’ world of the story. Brioni also features in High Pressure, although the stories are completely separate. It’s already getting amazing feedback from readers and has hit the No 1 slot in Eason, and is in Dubray store windows as well as being featured in the Times (UK) Crime Club newsletter.

I love building in detail of the world I write in, in the same way I find significant details about each character to help make them disctinctive on the page. Tiny details can tell us SO much about an individual, and I have a lot of fun finding out what they are. I want the character to form clearly in your mind without a long description – in the same way that you form an impression of someone you meet at a party within about thirty seconds. Those impressions are important to get right so you carry them with you through the book.

In Remember My Name, Brioni O’Brien is a tech expert, she’s young and very, very bright. She spent a year travelling and has an unalome tattoo on her wrist – a Buddhist symbol representing harmony coming out of chaos. Many things about Brioni’s life were chaotic, not least her getting mugged during her year abroad and coming home to discover her sister is missing. But when we meet her in Remember My Name, she’s studying for her Masters and working for a major company in Dublin’s tech quarter. She’s still got that bright pink hair and a double undercut (shaved up both sides) and a diamond nose stud from iconic jeweller No 42 (featured in Keep Your Eyes on Me), that her sister, Marissa, bought her for her 18th birthday.

My seventh book, I wrote Remember My Name in the depths of 2020’s lockdown, and it took me, in my imagination at least, out of our 5km limit, to the stunning village of Dalkey in County Dublin, to Grand Canal Dock in Dublin city and down to the beach in Wexford. It has a very twisty plot that I hope will surprise you – I wasn’t expecting everything that happened, but boy, is Laurence Howard in over his head…

Pick up your copy here!

Dubray: https://www.dubraybooks.ie/Remember-My-Name_9781838952952
Eason: https://www.easons.com/remember-my-name-sam-blake-9781838952952 
Bookstation: https://www.bookstation.ie/product/remember-my-name/
Amazon: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Remember-My-Name-Sam-Blake/dp/1838952950
Kindle: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Remember-My-Name-unforgettable-bestselling-ebook/dp/B0997PD57Y

(c) Sam Blake Jan 2021

Dubray Books new store, 2nd floor Dundrum Shopping Centre

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