Oh, yes. Mockingbird returns to Miriam a year later and sees that she's been keeping her power under wraps – she wears gloves, tries not to touch people, avoids her curse-slash-gift at any cost.

But when she returns from self-imposed exile, it all comes back to her in a big and sudden way. Further, as the story develops, so too do her powers – she gets another couple curious tricks up her sleeve.

We learn too, a little more about her past, in terms of her relationship with her family.

Was Miriam's story always going to be a duology?

Her story was always meant to be, if it needed to be, a standalone one-and-done story. You can come into her life and then be with her during this weird and awful time – a time of great change, upheaval, a major pivot point for her character – and then leave her be, confident that she has changed. For the better or for the worse, who knows?

But to me, the book has always lived on inside my head as a series. Not just two books, but a whole line of tales. Miriam's psychic ability allows for a great procedural hook: she can effectively solve and/or avenge murders before they happen. Couple that with her character – for me, easy to write and damaged enough to see how she both puts herself back together and breaks herself in whole new ways – and it feels to me like she's got legs as a series character.

That's my plan, at least. I know where her story ends. The tale of Miriam Black is far from over, not with Blackbirds, nor with Mockingbird.

Blackbirds is pretty dark, although there is a lot of humour and wit. There's also a lot of swearing and a lot of violence, which reflect the life that Miriam has led and the situation she now finds herself in. Did this require a particular mindset to write? The action sequences are very well choreographed. How much planning does it take to write a really good fight scene?

Darkness? Swearing? Violence? Me? Naaaah.

It actually troubles me sometimes how easy this was to write. Miriam's very comfortable to slip into as a character, and curiously that comfort is uncomfortable – "Hey, I can write this damaged, fucked up human being with no problem! It's like donning a suit tailor-made of bird bones and cancer sticks and the leathery skin of a snarky-yet-forlorn monster."

The action scenes are a whole other enchilada. I do find them fairly easy to write, but I don't choreograph them before hand. While Blackbirds represented a very important lesson for me as a writer (about outlining and planning), I don't find much value in sketching out every detail of a fight scene before it happens. In any of my preparatory notes I just write FIGHT SCENE in the ink brewed from the blood of my enemies and then, when I finally get there, I make it up as I go.