Most families spend their Friday nights arguing over the remote, discussing the football scores, or debating whose turn it is to load the dishwasher. The Groves household is a little different. If you were a fly on our wall ten years ago, you wouldn’t have heard us debating the offside rule. You would have heard four people, mouths full of homemade pizza, calmly discussing the most efficient way to dispose of a body without alerting the neighbours.

Welcome to family night at Moorside.

The origin of The Series of Silence wasn’t a lightning bolt of inspiration in a lonely library. It was a parenting tactic that spiralled beautifully out of control. It started a decade ago when I realised my daughter, Eden, possessed a level of creativity that needed a serious outlet. My son, Jericho, had his own interests, but Eden was different. She needed stories the way other kids needed air. I struggled to find things that truly engaged her, so I decided we wouldn’t just read stories. We would build one.

We established a ritual. Friday night was writing night.

The setup was simple. Kelly would make the pizza, we’d clear the table, and then we would open the laptop. It became a collaborative firing squad of ideas. While other parents were asking their kids how school was, we were asking ours, “If Seth Overaugh really wanted to hide the evidence, wouldn’t he use the fire pit?”

It turns out that nothing brings a family together quite like a shared conspiracy to commit fictional murder.

This project spans ten years, three trilogies, and a finale, but it is built entirely on those Friday evenings. There are four of us in the Moguhl team, and we all bring something different to the table. I handle the architecture of the saga. Kelly-Ann, my wife, is the voice of reason who ensures our historical timelines actually work and tells us when a plot point is ridiculous. Eden brings the character depth and narrative flair that breathe life into people like Izzy, even if she tries to put a little too much fire into scenes. Jericho, who grew into his role as our conceptual thinker, is usually the one who suggests the darker, more imaginative twists that keep you awake at night, but be under no illusion, it is Eden that always goes that little bit “darker” – and usually by way of a grisly fire sequence.

It’s a strange way to grow up, perhaps. I often wonder what the teachers thought when the kids went to school on Monday mornings.  Parent-teacher meetings were always fun!

“Eden is doing well, though her essay on Victorian crime scenes was a bit vivid. Very vivid in fact.”

Writing The Silence We Share (the second book) has been a journey of escalation. In the first book, the Overaughs committed the act. In this second book, they must live with the rot setting in. It mirrors our own Friday nights in a way. We started with a simple idea, a single secret, and then spent years layering on the complications, the blackmail, and the supernatural dread, baking it all together with rich canon and lore that needs to stand up to scrutiny.

We built Moorside House: The Series of Silence page by page, argument by argument, usually covered in flour and tomato sauce – and a constant need to stop Eden trying to kill off main characters with fire (it was a real issue at one stage!).

So, when you read about Seth panicking in the hospital car park, or Natalia making a cold calculation in the kitchen, know that those scenes weren’t born in isolation. They were forged in the chaos of a family dinner, which inspired us. We laughed, we debated, and we plotted the downfall of our characters with a frightening amount of enthusiasm.

We hope you enjoy reading The Series of Silence as much as we enjoyed arguing about it. And if you ever come round for pizza on a Friday, maybe don’t ask what’s in the sauce, and for God’s sake, take the lighter off Eden!

Heath KM Groves
Lead Author – and chief fire dodger

You can see more about Moorside House on our homepage: www.moorsidehouse.com and more from our blog here: www.moorsidehouse.com/news