L’impondérable

I suppose I was buoyed on by the success of ‘L’assassiner de Sebastian Dubois’ and its use of flashbacks to attempt something I’d been toying with for a while. The idea was to use the flashbacks as an actual part of the story and to alternate between the past and the present throughout the book, the past giving a clue to what was going to happen in the future.

‘L’impondérable’ (or ‘The unpredictable element which affects the determination of events,’ as the tagline explains) was an interesting story to write. It was long and complicated and took copious amounts of planning and enough sticky notes to paper a room (all recycled afterwards, honest!). The notes were necessary because it was a complicated story spread over many decades, but I have to say looking back at it now, I only remember it being a lot of fun.

SPOILERS: I also got to finalise a lot of plots that had been brewing for some time. I’d toyed with the idea of killing off Louis Beaupain for a long time, as far back as the first Hugo book. In my original plan, he died in the fire that consumed his mansion, but I also hadn’t planned on writing more Hugo books, so when I did only Willum Bitand died in the fire.

The three best friends, Louis, Willum and Jean Luc Missero were all very bad men in various ways, protecting each other at all costs and I always intended on exploring their duplicity. With Willum dead, I also killed off Missero in ‘Les noms sur les tombs,’ though if I’m honest, I came to regret it. The fact was, the three of them had done some terrible things and in effect had gotten away with it. Their reputations might have been sullied but they were never punished for their crimes when they were alive. I toyed with the idea of Louis bearing the brunt and standing trial for his part in the crimes, but in the end, I reasoned against it. He might be publicly humiliated, but I wondered whether he would ever really face any kind of punishment.

As I processed with ‘L’impondérable’ I knew right away it would be very much the story of those three rich men and what they had done and gotten away with. I thought of many different ways of killing off Louis, especially when there could be so many potential suspects! In the end, I chose the one which fitted the story best. If you’ve read the book, you’ll know his death opens up a real can of worms.

I talked in the last blog about how I’d decided previously that it would turn out Louis had fathered Sebastian Dubois, but I hadn’t thought about him fathering other children too, that came with this story. It seemed a fitting end to one of the most divisive characters I’d written and ultimately the reason I decided to kill him off. There really was no need to keep going with him as it was, and I thought if I kept going he’d end up becoming more of a pantomime villain than the multi-dimensional character I’d imagined, and by adding the backstory it allows the other characters to react in very different ways.

Looking back, I realise I haven’t fully imagined it all yet, and I think that’s because ‘‘L’impondérable’ felt like the end of a chapter and I was happy to move on with new storylines. I don’t recall being unhappy or stressed about writing this particular book (that honour was to come with the new book in the series) and revisiting it has been fun. Of course, there are things I would change with hindsight, but as it is now, I think it accomplished what I wanted it to.

On a lighter note, I noticed that I had called the nightclub seen throughout the novel, ‘Coco’s.’ A foreshadowing of the chaotic character I wouldn’t create for a few more years. Rather I think it was as simple as I was trying to come up with a name and looked around and no doubt the first thing I saw was my angel boy Charlie, and I thought, that’ll do! As a side note, all three of Charlotte ‘Coco’ Brunhild’s names came from my furry son, but I’m sure I’ll tell you more about that in a future blog.

I hope you enjoyed these three blogs about the middle Hugo books. Maybe I’ll do some more about the others in the future, but for now, it will have to wait as I’ve now begun work on ‘Hugo & Madeline,’ and I’m sure it will keep me occupied for some time to come.

Take care and thanks always for reading.

Gxx