Film rights fight for Black Country author's second book

Steve Watson's debut book Before I Go To Sleep topped bestseller lists and became a film starring Nicole Kidman and Colin Firth.

And his follow-up, Second Life, looks set to follow suit. It is not released until February 12 but the author has revealed there is already demand from Hollywood for the film rights.

Going under the name SJ Watson, he has become one of the biggest names in modern literature after taking the world by storm with Before I Go To Sleep.

Now he is releasing Second Life, which has been three years in the making – and says he is feeling the pressure.

When he wrote Before I Go To Sleep in 2011, he was a budding writer who had taken leave from his job as an audiology specialist in London, having grown up in Stourbridge.

The book slowly built up a following and received a huge boost when Richard and Judy featured it in their book club on their old Channel 4 teatime show.

Within weeks it had topped the Sunday Times bestseller list, and has since been translated into more than 50 languages.

Second Life is out on Thursday, February 12, and Mr Watson says it is likely to become another film.

He said: "There is interest, and some quite exciting names being mentioned, but it is far too early for me to say anymore. I'm letting it all go on in the background really."

And though his debut was a huge success, he admits he is feeling nervous about his latest offering. While writing the new book, he could not escape the feeling that publishers – not to mention thousands of fans – were eagerly waiting.

But he says he realised he simply had to write a book that he 'loved'.

He said: "I have written a book which I think is better than Before I Go To Sleep, and now it is a case of releasing it into the world.

"The last book was written in a kind of blissful bubble of ignorance so it is a very different experience this time round."

Second Life is another thriller, this time telling the story of a woman whose life is turned upside down when her sister is brutally murdered in a random attack.

She starts investigating what happened, but ends up uncovering a series of revelations about her own life.

The book also looks at the idea of people's online identities in the internet age and the different personas they create – which Mr Watson himself has some experience of now he has his own public profile.

"I guess subconsciously that must have influenced me when I as writing," he said. "There are different versions of me now – the one that sits at home writing, the one that does interviews and the one that appears at events – but no one is more me than the other."

The Before I Go To Sleep film was a box office hit and the author says he thought it was 'great', and showed that his work can be translated to the big screen. He added: "I think it went very well. People enjoyed it and were gasping in all the right places."