The author of the new TV Amazon Prime thriller, Wilderness, shares her journey. The Jenna Coleman starring dark mystery with the soundtrack of Taylor Swift has everyone, gripped audience through its 6 episodes. The author Beverley Jones shared her views and how she came to write this book. But something interesting came up as Dickens started to reveal more about what this series meant to her.
She has been working as a journalist and a police press officer. So, writing about crime came naturally to her. Everyone is enjoying this twisty revenge thriller, Wilderness, right after the series became accessible on Friday for every Amazon Prime user. But Bev from Pontypridd explains she was about to quit writing when a phone call changed her life completely.
The 48-year-old author said, “It was back in 2019 and I was sitting in my box room at home, quietly sulking and downloading application forms for jobs in PR.” Popular with the penname B’E’ Jones said, Bev had “several books in by that point and was just about to give up writing in order to go back to the nine-to-five life.” Continuing, “I’d decided to take a career break from my job as a press officer for South Wales Police to try my hand at being a full-time novelist.”
Sharing how hard it can be to meet up with living costs by writing, she said, “But while being a published writer can earn you some money, it’s not really a living wage.” “So I was preparing to semi-retire and concentrate once again on things like, you know, paying the mortgage,” she added. And this was the time her phone rang.
On the other side of the phone, she continues, “It was my agent calling to tell me that Wilderness, the sixth of seven books I’ve done, was being turned into a television series – I almost burst into tears.” And she also added it has been a “whirlwind ever since”.
She added, “I knew these TV adaptations can sometimes languish on the back burner for years before seeing the light of day, so I promised myself I wouldn’t get too carried away.” She also added, “However, a few months later Firebird Films – the company who picked up the book – invited me to London to a chat about it, at which point they pulled out an already completed script and told me they had financial backers who were raring to go.”
She was amazed to see how “keen and on-the-ball” the makers were about her story. But right after that COVID-19 compelled the world to shut down including the advancement of this project. This was the time the initial makers of the movie opted out but soon after she knew Amazon Prime Video was coming onboard. “Within six months a cast had been sorted and filming had begun,” Bev added.
In Wilderness, the former Doctor Who star Jenna Coleman plays the protagonist, Olivia. The character of Olivia falls apart when she comes to know her husband, Will, played by The Haunting of Bly Manor artist Oliver Jackson-Cohen, is cheating on her. And thus, the “darkly twisted thriller” begins.
