I try to write characters with side-kicks so they have someone to talk to. My hero of Unkept Promises has no-one for most of the novel, so readers need to see inside his head. ‘Show, don’t tell,’ they say, but don’t you sometimes find that your hero, heroine, or even villain is all alone and you need the reader to know what they’re thinking? Share me an excerpt with some introspection. Here’s a bit of mine, from Unkept Promises.

The house had been sold, the remaining servants had all taken positions elsewhere, so Jules was bunking down in the spare room at a friend’s place. He was sailing soon, and perhaps would never return. The navy wanted him in the Bay of Biscay: him and his ship. When the war was over, he’d retire. He had been at sea, man and boy, for nearly twenty years, and what he’d said to Mia had been echoing ever since. Once the war was over, the Navy would offer little chance for advancement. They’d have more captains than ships, and he had never been willing to use his family connections to edge out men as well qualified as him and perhaps in greater need.

Besides, he had a family. He wanted to build a home with them, see his children grow, wake up to his wife’s welcoming smile.

The cemetery was his last stop before he sailed. He stood before Kirana’s grave, the flowers someone had left long wilted on the mound of still raw earth. The tombstone he and Mia had planned was not yet in place, but he could see it in his mind’s eye. “Here lies Kirana Redepenning, devoted mother and friend. Taken from us far too soon, she will always be in the hearts of Julius, Euronyme, Perdana, Marshanda and Adiratna.”

“I will look after them, Kirana,” he promised. “They will want for nothing.”