- Sean Cameron
- Feb 27
- 5 min read
When It Rains is set inside a local TV studio, where Rex and Eddie are hired to find the stalker of the local weather reporter. The seed for the novel was planted more than twenty years ago, when I was a runner at Maidstone Studios. I was barely out of college, sprinting between photocopiers, making twenty-plus cups of tea in one go, and learning that live television runs on adrenaline and gaffer tape.
I knew I was stockpiling material for something, but I didn’t know what yet.
Slime, Scripts, and Saturday Morning Chaos
I worked on Holly & Stephen's Saturday Showdown — CITV’s last live Saturday morning children’s show. It was loud, frantic, and joyfully chaotic: team games, phone-ins, celebrity guests, and an industrial quantity of slime.
From the outside, it looked like all fun. Behind the scenes, it was a mad dash to create a new show every week, which can be fun, but also stressful. It was insightful to learn how people behave around celebrities. How ambitious production staff could get into power plays with each other. It was a bit like 30 Rock, but the career anxiety wasn’t Liz Lemon’s. It was mine.
The one quiet moment each week was on Thursday night, I’d be alone in the studio printing forty scripts for rehearsals. There were two photocopiers at opposite ends of the building. I’d run between them, reloading paper and clearing jams. After dark, those long corridors felt off. One time, the night guard disappeared, and I was locked in. I wandered around looking for him, my imagination filling the silence, thinking up scenarios to set there. I worked out how to use the loudspeaker at the reception desk to let him know, but he didn’t respond. Eventually, he found me taking a kip on the waiting area chairs. I suspect he had just gotten back from his own nap.
The Line That Became a Novel
The junior researcher, Stu, was responsible for opening the fan mail. The female presenter would sometimes receive unsettling items from adult men. Stu filtered it all. He’d mention the strangest things he’d found — but only when she wasn’t in the room.
One day I asked, half-joking: “What if someone sends anthrax?”
The producer shrugged. “Then we get a new Stu.”
In that moment, I became aware of the quiet hazards around public figures – especially women – who appear on screen daily and feel “known” to viewers.
A version of that line made it into When It Rains. The idea sat in the back of my mind for two decades before I finally used it.
Why a Local Newsroom?
I chose to set the novel in a local newsroom rather than national television for one reason: proximity.
Local news creates a stronger parasocial bond. Viewers see the same faces every day. The presenters feel reachable, familiar, and almost personal.
That’s why the target in the book is the weather reporter, Marigold Fields. Weather presenters talk directly to the viewer. They appear nightly. They feel approachable. If someone were to fixate, that’s the face they’d fixate on.
A news show setting also lets Rex and Eddie move around Cloisterham naturally — filming segments, chasing leads, and bumping into the public. It keeps the story kinetic.
Puppets, Promos, and Performance
Live television was a great way to learn how to run on instinct and not second guess your choices. As I gained the showrunner’s trust, I was allowed to write the recorded promos — short teasers for upcoming episodes. The weekly challenge of squeezing in a joke or visual gag sharpened my instincts for rhythm and payoff. I mostly enjoyed pulling the puppet Scratch the hyena into the segment to do a bit of business.
One time, the production office had me work on their reboot of The Basil Brush Show. Basil Brush is a British institution. In the early 2000s, he made a comeback with this children’s sitcom. Basil is a posh, red-cravatted fox with impeccable diction and perfect comic timing. He always refers to the humans around him as Mister or Miss and their first name.
The producer had me join him to film new actors auditioning opposite Basil. The moment the puppeteer slipped under the table, Basil came alive and everyone bought into the illusion. He stopped being fabric and became a personality.
At the start of each audition, Basil would call out: “Say when, Mister Sean.”
“Uh… when, Basil.” I’d respond.
It felt ridiculous and magical at the same time. TV has edits and music and effects to make it more real, but it still worked without all that when an audience (including myself, in that moment) wants to believe. On the page, my words are ink arranged in the order of my choosing. But the moment I agree to their existence—Eddie’s anxious logic, Rex’s ill-timed optimism—they stop being words on a page and start interrupting each other. They start making bad decisions without even asking to say when.
The Birth of Rex & Eddie
Around the same time, YouTube was emerging. I started sketching two detectives on late-night stakeouts — small, dialogue-driven vignettes filmed in a car. Those early experiments became Rex and Eddie.
Years later, when Kindle opened the door to indie-publishing, I had characters ready. Television had given me pacing, dialogue instincts, and an appreciation for tight structure. Publishing gave me control.
Rex and Eddie evolved, but their DNA traces back to those studio corridors and late-night brainstorms.
Eddie and the Road Not Taken
I’d previously hinted that Eddie had a journalism degree. Setting When It Rains inside a newsroom allowed me to explore that fully.
Eddie Miles is an investigator by instinct. In another version of his life, he might have become an investigative journalist. Instead, he’s a private detective — working outside institutions, hired case by case. By placing him inside a newsroom as a contractor, I could explore his Sliding Doors moment. Have him experience the career he didn’t choose, or didn’t choose him. It adds emotional weight to the mystery.
Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if I’d stayed in television. Eventually, I pivoted to more stable work — marketing, teaching, and other roles that paid reliably. But I never stopped building stories. Television taught me how to move fast, how to think visually, and how to manage chaos. When It Rains is my way of returning to that world — not as a runner sprinting between photocopiers, but as the person controlling the narrative.
It took twenty years for that offhand anthrax comment to become a novel. Some stories gather pressure quietly before they finally break into rain.
Get your copy of When It Rains on Amazon.
