The ringing of an unanswered telephone. The clink of a dropped spanner. The muffle of footsteps, unidentified in the dark. The flapping of a letterbox. The unsolicited door knock, close to midnight. The wailing sirens closing in on the park. The thud of a back, thrust against a wall.
We started Wilf's journey with the awkward, spotty teenager from Lancashire falling in love for the first time, beginning to dream about pop superstardom and having his first real awakening to the harsh unfairness of the real world. That was 'The Broken Bottle'.
A year or so later he was enjoying his first taste of parent-free adulthood in the deep south of Eire. Admittedly, it was still under the watchful eye of his aunt but that didn't stop him from getting unwittingly mixed up in the messy complexities of other people's lives. That was 'How Green Are Your Eyes'.
Now we find Wilf in the North East of England, without any responsible adults to guide him along his way and, frankly, life doesn't ever get easier, does it? This is 'This Is Not The End'.
All three stories are very loosely based on some sort of reality. It's hard to write about things without having at least some semblance of fact upon which to base things.
Let's get this clear from the start though: I am not Wilf, nor is Wilf me. However I did grow up in Lancashire, spend a summer in Cork, and go to Polytechnic in Newcastle. That much is true. Indeed, some of the things that happen in 'This Is Not The End' are very much based on my experiences in the north east; others, meanwhile, are definitely forged in the mind. Which are which? I'll let you decide.
The cover is designed once again by Ruby Hartley, and captures many cameos from within the book - see how many you can find once you've read it. Various shots of the cover provide the visual content for the song 'Scotswood Terrace', the video for which is below. I wrote 'Scotswood Terrace' a few years after leaving the North East behind, with my late teens and early twenties very much in mind. It could be a great place to be when things were going well; when they weren't it was far from ideal.
Since completing 'This Is Not The End' I have found myself, in idle moments, wondering what will become of Wilf when he becomes a fully-fledged adult. 'The Broken Bottle' was always supposed to be the first book in a trilogy. Now I'm not so sure ...
