Some novels are written in peaceful surroundings, with long, uninterrupted hours devoted to storytelling. Serenity Falls was not one of them.

When I began writing Serenity Falls, I was employed full-time as a technical writer.

And to say that my workload was demanding would be something of an understatement.

My working days were long, the pressure was considerable, and there were times when the idea of sitting down to write fiction after spending so many hours writing technical documentation seemed almost absurd.

But the story was there.

And I wanted to tell it.

So I stole an hour whenever I could.

Sometimes it was an hour here, sometimes another hour there. I had accumulated plenty of extra working hours, but finding the time and energy to write a novel was still a challenge.

I wasn't working to a leisurely schedule. I was fitting an imaginary world into the spaces left behind by a very real one.

And somehow, amid all those responsibilities, Serenity Falls began to take shape.

My first attempt at a murder investigation

Until then, much of my storytelling had revolved around haunted places, restless spirits, family relationships and the mysteries of the supernatural.

With Serenity Falls, I wanted to try something different.

I wanted to write a murder investigation.

Not simply a ghost story in which strange things happened, but a mystery involving suspicious deaths, motives, evidence, suspects and the uncomfortable questions that arise when people have something to hide.

The story would still belong to the world of Coby McTavish, with its ghosts, eccentric personalities and occasional British humour.

But this time, I wanted to explore the darker side of human nature.

Greed. Ambition. Family resentment. The things people might do to protect their interests.

And, of course, the rather unfortunate consequences of becoming involved in someone else's murder investigation.

I enjoyed the challenge enormously.

Writing a mystery meant thinking differently about how information was revealed, how suspicion developed and how the reader might interpret the behaviour of different characters.

I was learning as I went along.

Which, looking back, was precisely what made the experience so valuable.

An experiment with Scottish dialect

I also decided to try something else.

Scottish dialect.

Because the novel was set in Scotland, I thought it might add authenticity to the dialogue if some characters spoke in a more distinctly Scottish manner.

It seemed like a good idea at the time.

Unfortunately, my readers weren't quite as enthusiastic about the experiment as I had hoped.

And I didn't realise this until the reviews began appearing.

Some readers found the dialect difficult to follow, which was certainly not my intention.

I wanted the dialogue to bring the characters to life, not make readers work harder to understand them.

So I listened.

And I went back to the manuscript.

I revised the dialogue, removing much of the dialect that had caused difficulties, while trying to preserve the personalities and Scottish atmosphere of the story.

It wasn't the most enjoyable part of the process, especially after all the work that had already gone into the novel.

But it taught me something important.

As writers, we sometimes become so attached to an idea that we forget to consider how it feels to the person reading it.

An experiment can be worthwhile even when it doesn't succeed.

And reader feedback, when approached thoughtfully, can help us become better storytellers.

I have never regretted trying something new.

Nor have I regretted learning from the response.

The day something extraordinary happened

Then came a moment I could never have anticipated.

I shared the cover of Serenity Falls on Twitter.

It was simply another post about a book I had written, much like the countless posts independent authors share every day.

I certainly wasn't expecting anything extraordinary.

But something happened.

People began viewing the post.

And the numbers kept climbing.

Thousands.

Tens of thousands.

Hundreds of thousands.

Until the post had accumulated more than 2.5 million views.

I remember looking at those numbers and struggling to comprehend what I was seeing.

Here was a novel I had written during stolen hours,