P.J. Murphy's Writer Site

Today marks the release of my fourth novel, Six Steps to Salvation, and already I’m preparing material for the limited Director’s Cut edition, with this ‘Making of’ article.*

As a side note, did anyone ever watch those DVD extras that we paid extra for? I have a backlog of DVDs from at least ten years ago that I’m likely never to watch, but which seemed invaluable at the time.

Six Steps to Salvation is a loose sequel to my first novel, Troubleshot. I didn’t initially plan to write a sequel, but a few things pointed me in that direction. Its genesis came from feedback I’d had on previous novels about my characters being unsympathetic (i.e. realistic). I don’t mean to sound dismissive here; I absolutely acknowledge that the characters of Dead Letters are flawed, and that Troubleshot played off a three-way power struggle between the community, public and private sectors, none of which you could entirely get behind. My motivation was to represent “warts and all” characters, but indeed it’s good as a reader to have a hero they can root for. We all need heroes, especially in this day and age.

Who would have imagined that this hero would be Trent Argent? The antagonist of Troubleshot, I chose him as the lead character for Six Steps because I wanted to make life hard for myself. One of the story’s arcs is me trying to make the reader (almost) like him. I had a lot of fun with it, setting him up as the fall guy, downtrodden, kicked when he was down.

The rest of the novel fell into place around that. He needed other characters to play off, and I thought it would be interesting to have them take the reverse path to Trent, from innocent to jaded, as he tries to redeem himself. Hence, the campmates (Hobbs, Bong and Amara) were born – unpaid interns camping under a bridge in Geneva.

It’s probably less of a mystery how Six Steps came to be set in Geneva. I’ve been living there for over a decade, and they do say to write what you know. But Trent isn’t me, honest. Seriously, though, placing Trent in Geneva offered a fantastic opportunity to strip away his confidence and introduce him as a fish out of water character we can laugh at and feel sympathy for. It also meant I could weave in some of the ridiculous things that have happened to me here, in the same way as I did with my previous work in the UK for Troubleshot. Exaggerated and distorted out of all recognition, of course.

Six Steps came together fairly easily – aided somewhat by the episodic structure we first saw in Troubleshot, which enabled me to break it down into bite-sized chunks. I also had the benefit of writing a lot of it during a work sabbatical and getting input from writing groups and retreats (I mention this in the acknowledgements of the book). I’m pleased with how it turned out and hope that it acts as a bridge between the humour-focused (Troubleshot) and literary-focused (Yesterday’s Shadow; Dead Letters) publications. That was part of my motivation for making it so character-based, too.

What’s next? Well, Trent Argent will return, and sooner than I’d planned. The momentum gained from Six Steps has combined with current events which positively invite satire to set up The Triumph of Common Sense, the final part of my notional Troubleshot Trilogy, as the main focus of my attention. So, after taking short time-out to promote Six Steps, you can expect me to get back to writing about Trent. And boy, does he have some thrills and spills awaiting him…

Speaking of promotion, I’m marking the release of Six Steps with a reduced price for the Kindle edition of Troubleshot and Yesterday’s Shadow for the next week. And you might see some articles from me in various magazines. More on that in another post!

Six Steps to Salvation is available from Amazon, to order from all good bookshops, and the audiobook version will be available any day now from Audible and Apple.

* This is fake news. I have no plans to release another version unless there is a groundswell of demand, which seems unlikely. For reference, if this ever happens, it will be hardback, gold embossed and contain a lottery ticket for dinner with me. So, there you go, your motivation not to request it.