The idea arrived in 2015 while he was commuting home from his twenty-five-year journalism career, at a moment when he and his partner were deep in wedding planning. The setting mattered: a London Underground escalator, surrounded by strangers moving in the opposite direction, his own contentment throwing the question into sharp relief.

John Marrs

I was looking at the folk on the other side thinking how lucky I was to have found my match. Then I began wondering how much easier it would be if there was something inside us all that matched us with just one person in the world. And if we came into contact with them, we just knew on instinct, they were the perfect person for us. I started writing The One the next day.

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poetsin.com, “Bestseller John Marrs talks about writing, his favourite books and suicide”

Self-publishing his first books on the daily commute from Northamptonshire to London had given him something traditional publishing rarely offers a debut writer: complete creative latitude. That freedom is what let him attempt a premise as strange as DNA-matched soulmates, a significant genre departure from the psychological thrillers he had written before.

John Marrs

I could write whatever I wanted, when I wanted... this is probably the quickest book that I’ve ever written, to get that first draft. I worked out who my five main characters were gonna be, and then just started knocking them out, really, just getting on with it. [paraphrased from audio]

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GBC News, “The Breakfast Show speaks to bestselling author John Marrs”

An editor at Penguin spotted the self-published version within about a week of its 2016 release, originally titled A Thousand Small Explosions. The speed of that acquisition suggests the premise landed exactly as intended.

He came to the book without an outline and without any scientific background. His working method across all his fiction follows the same pattern: find the story’s shape, then move.

John Marrs

I’m not much of a plotter. I’ll know the basic story and then start writing.

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crimefictionlover.com, “Interview: John Marrs”

The five-character rotating structure was a deliberate solution to a reader-attention problem, and the solution came directly from his tabloid years, where short, punchy copy held readers who might otherwise move on.

John Marrs

if I wrote like 50 pages per character, people are going to forget who I’m writing about. So short and punchy, and I think that comes from the tabloid side of things. [paraphrased from audio]

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NewsChannel 9 WSYR Syracuse, “Chapter Nine Book Club with John Marrs”

Within that structure he wrote in whatever order his mood dictated, only working out the final sequence of chapters once all five stories were drafted.

The DNA science at the heart of the book required outside help, because he arrived with essentially no grounding in biology. He described coming in with a school-grade D in science and reaching out through whatever contacts he could find.

John Marrs

I’ve had a police officer telling me how to clean up a murder scene, a Cambridge DNA expert informing me of how to make the science part of The One more realistic and members based in Australia helping me pick out suitable locations.

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lindasbookbag.com, “An Interview with John Marrs, author of The One”

Christopher, the book’s serial killer, was the furthest he had ever pushed a character at that point in his career. The two novels he had written before The One were psychological thrillers, but neither had taken him anywhere close to this territory.

John Marrs

I’d never written anything like him before in the two books that came before it. So it was really good fun to just go to town with him and see what he could get away with. [paraphrased from audio]

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NewsChannel 9 WSYR Syracuse, “Chapter Nine Book Club with John Marrs”

Ellie, the billionaire founder of the DNA matching company at the center of the plot, is the character most directly shaped by his journalism career. He drew on two and a half decades of interviewing public figures to inhabit her wariness of the press.

John Marrs

As a journalist I know what I’d want from an interview with her, if she existed in the real world. And I understand that after being burned in the past, she wouldn’t want to give much away. She would see journalists as untrustworthy and out to get a good angle at her expense.

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lindasbookbag.com, “An Interview with John Marrs, author of The One”

The book’s central provocation is a personal one, and he was direct about where he stood. He put the question to himself before he put it to readers, and his answer split cleanly along the line between his past and his present.

John Marrs

please don’t think it’s a sci-fi book as it’s much more about relationships.

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lindasbookbag.com, “An Interview with John Marrs, author of The One”

Beneath the DNA premise runs an argument about dissatisfaction, about the habit of imagining something better exists just out of reach. He identified that tendency as the emotional engine of the book.

John Marrs

I address it in the book, that there’s so many people out there who think the grass is greener on the other side. Often it’s not and we need to stop and smell the roses on our own side of the fence and appreciate what we have.

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compulsivereaders.com, “John Marrs – Ask The Author”

He rarely receives direct evidence that a novel changed a reader’s life in concrete, measurable terms. One message about The One was the exception, and he named it as the most affecting reader response he had ever received.

John Marrs

The One involves DNA matches and a recent reader told me it inspired her to sign up with an ancestry website as she had been adopted as a child and didn’t know who her biological parents were. Weeks later she found both sides of her biological family and that reunion has changed her life forever. I doubt if I’ll ever receive a message that touches me more than hers.

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jeanbooknerd.com, “John Marrs Interview - The Passengers ~ JeanBookNerd”