What happens when the acclaimed international TV crime drama, Blue Bloods, inspires a story?

It becomes the brand new Illicit Things series, Her, Him, and Madam X.

In 2021, Channel 10 (partly owned by CBS), decided to show multiple episodes of Blue Bloods across four days a week. We would get between 4-8 per episodes depending on how many they showed per night.

After many a week of episodes, one morning in September, I came out of REM state after having a dream about the Reagan family, and my brain had this conversation with my conscience.

Brain: That would make an awesome novel

Conscience: But he’s too young, I can’t write that.

Brain: It’s fiction, yes you can.

Conscience: Yeah…I could.

It was an awesome idea for a novel, but I had to put it on the back burner for other things, thus extinguishing the inspiration for it. Which was a pity, because that idea was something else; it made me rub my hands together at all of the twists and turns my brain was coming up with. That has NEVER happened with any other book I’ve written.

Then, in October, I had the idea for its partner in crime. Book two. Running along the same timeline, telling the story from a different point of view. But then, in November, along came an idea after seeing Jason Sudeikis in the movie Colossal, and the idea was left in the dust.

In February 2022, I started the first novel. But eight pages in I had no idea what I was doing because it was going to be the first book in a duology and I’d never written a duology that coincided with each other’s timeline. I had no clue which way I was going to write them, and, because I wanted to get something published in September, I decided to let them go and write the other idea I’d had instead. Which became Anything for You.

After finishing AFY, I chose to work on something that went from being a trilogy to a novel, and that became Burning Desires, which I released in 2024 as I had decided to have a break from publishing, something I had done every year for 9 years, in 2023.

Later that year, I finally opened up a notebook and started writing the first Blue Bloods inspired novel which became Her. I made the decision to not worry about how I was going to write book 2, and just complete book 1 and see how I went.

In April 2024, I wrote the second book, which became Him. And, unfortunately, because my characters are authors, I had to come up with titles and premises for their books, and goddamn it, some of them were so good I wanted to start writing them. Here’s the conversation my brain had with my muse.

Muse: You know those book titles the characters have…

Brain: Warily glances at her. Yessss….

Muse: They’re really good, aren’t they?

Brain: Sighs. They are…

Muse: You know what’s going to happen, right?

Brain: Dammit! I’m going to have to write them, aren’t I?

Out of all the titles, I picked only one that made sense, and that book became Madam X, the prequel and third book in the series.

Technically, the book was going to be a stand-alone about a madam mentioned in the duology, but it quickly became the prequel to the entire story and the reason why everything that happens in Her and Him. It exploded as sneaky idea after sneaky idea came pouring into my brain. So, while it’s the third book in the series, because it will be more fun finding out the reason after the other two, it’s very much a prequel, and just under half the size.

During the time between novels, I started an essay on Joe Hill, a character from the show. The first round of it was 14,000 words, by the end of the series it was 21,315. It’s free to read here on my website. You can see that essay here. 

 

All three are now available for pre-order on Amazon, Kobo, iTunes, Google, Barnes & Noble, and dozens more stores.

 

Her will be released on September 19th, the 10th anniversary of the passing of my author mentor and inspiration, Jackie Collins. I’ve been publishing my adult novels on this day since 2016, bar 2023, as my nod to her.

Him will be released on October 4th, what would have been her 88th birthday.

Madam X will be released two weeks later, on October 19th.