Where did Blackstone House come from?

One question I often get is “where did that idea come from?” And for Blackstone House, there’s one definite place the seed was planted.

Many, many years ago, a good friend called me up and said, “Hey, want to go and watch another show at Pinewood?” Me: What kind of show? Her: Some magician? I don’t really know.

We live close to Pinewood Studios, and they often offer free tickets for shows where they need a live audience. And who can forget the time her mum came along and got told off for laughing too loudly? At a sitcom. Like, I thought that was the point, but apparently it was fucking with the microphones so she had to move to a different seat.

Anyhow, off we went, and it turned out the filming was outside, and it was freezing. And long. We stood around for hours and hours, and then they locked the illusionist dude (think budget David Blaine) in a shed, and then they blew the shed up.

It was long. It was boring. And I had plenty of time to think. And when we worked out how they did the trick, I thought “Hey, that would make a cool idea for a book.” So, that’s how Blackstone House was born. The seed grew bigger, and I ended up with ten housemates, and because I didn’t want to write the same book ten times over, I gave them all different jobs. Do I want to watch hot shirtless dudes all day and call it research? Absolutely, so Zach became a surfer. Do I want to visit vineyards and make it tax-deductible? Yup. So Nolan became a vintner. Do I want to shoot assholes and– Okay, I’ll stop there.

But I found the video of the show on YouTube the other day, so if you want to see where it all started (you’ll want to fast-forward through, like, the first forty minutes, trust me), I’m there in the audience somewhere…

And you can find out more about the Blackstone House series here!