Let’s be honest. The title here probably tells you most of what you need to know. Every story I’ve ever written, or even half-planned, began with the same two words: what if?
But here’s where I come clean with you. Most of my “what ifs” don’t arrive in some polished notebook moment. They turn up at stupid o’clock in the morning when I can’t sleep, when the rest of the world is dead quiet and my brain just refuses to shut off. That’s why I keep my phone by the bed. Not for socials, not for doomscrolling — but because it’s my notepad. If I don’t get those fragments down in the moment, they’re gone.
The funny part is what comes next. I wake up the following morning, look at whatever I typed half-asleep, and usually think: was this genius, or absolute rubbish? That’s when the real work starts. I take that messy late-night scribble and ask the question that matters: what if this idea actually played out?
Take my upcoming book, Across the Brief, which I’ll hopefully be releasing just in time for Christmas (perfect stocking filler, just saying). That one started with me watching Gavin & Stacey. There was something I loved about the idea of two people meeting in different countries, with all the humour and heart that can come from that kind of connection. My brain immediately went: what if two people really did meet that way today? How would it look in 2025, not 2005?
That’s when I decided to make it transatlantic — one character in London, the other in New York. And because we all live on our phones these days, I asked myself: could a single social media notification change someone’s life? That “what if” became the seed that grew into the book.
But it’s not just that book. Every project on my Coming Soon page has the same DNA:
- Love on Wheels came from me wondering: what if a man who had given up on life found hope again through someone who refused to let him shut the world out?
- Prime Minister’s Daughter grew out of: what if the most powerful man in Britain found his family under direct threat — and the only person who could protect his daughter was a bodyguard scarred by his own past?
- This Time Around was born from: what if a band’s lone survivor had to carry not just the weight of his music, but the ghosts of everything he’d lost?
- The False Flag President came from a darker place: what if loyalty to the truth became the very thing that branded you a traitor?
- Fit to Serve started with: what if a man’s only dream was to wear the uniform, but the system he believed in told him he wasn’t good enough?
- For the Country grew from: what if the youngest Prime Minister in British history faced a crisis so devastating it threatened to bring the entire nation to its knees?
- Disavowed — the first book in The Vale Protocols — was sparked by: what if one of MI6’s most loyal operatives was cast out and forced to fight threats his own government wanted buried?
- The Fifth Circle came from one of the darkest “what ifs” I’ve ever asked myself: what if I wrote a story from the terrorist’s point of view? Not to glorify it — far from it — but because so much of what I’d grown up watching, from James Bond to 24, always told the story from the hero’s perspective. I wanted to flip the lens, to see what it would look like if you forced the reader into the other side. Uncomfortable, yes. But real.
That’s the process, every single time. The idea arrives — usually at an ungodly hour — and then I sit with it. I twist it around, ground it in something real, and ask “what if” again and again until it becomes a story worth telling.
Not every idea could happen in real life. Some are far-fetched, some are rooted in the here and now. But I always try to write them in a way that feels believable. Because for me, that’s where the story actually lives: in the space between imagination and reality.
So yeah — every story starts with “what if.” The real trick is having the guts to follow the answer.
Want to see where those late-night “what ifs” lead? Keep an eye on my books, updates, and more over at cmeewrites.com.