Before I was anything else I wrote short stories. I sold one (aged 18) to a magazine and got unreasonably excited. I had found a career, a way to get rich. I was wrong.
At university my whole friend group fell heavily for the X Files, especially for Gillian Anderson in her role as Agent Scully. As usual I fell more heavily than anyone else and wrote a novel about her. My Gillian was the wife of the main character, Peter Flynn, and she really was abducted by aliens. From Beyond Belief is the story about what happened next, and the lengths a husband might go to help his wife.
In 1996 there was a terrible yet mysterious plane crash off the coast of New York. TWA800 exploded and fell out of the sky. Could it have been a bomb? Kicking Tin, my second novel, analyses several crashes including TWA800 and the Lockerbie bombing. I came up with a different explanation but I found it was the research for both novels that I enjoyed more than making up some story.
I stopped writing novels when I started work in London but I was storing up stories. I was living ‘for the narrative’ as my friend sometimes says. I did everything, in every country, in all kinds of hotels, and remembered all of it.
When my daughter was born I found myself with more time on my hands. When she was about one I wrote Ogham Forest, a children’s story about a family holiday with some magic thrown in. She read (some of it) when she was older and voiced a chapter of the audiobook herself.
At the same time I wrote Ernest Zevon, a story about a man who might be a little bit like Warren Zevon (though less wild, and British not American) and an Australian female sax player whom I will not name here. You can hear a trailer for that book right here, voiced by the inimitable Miranda Keeling.
In lockdown I fell heavily for American noir private eye thrillers and wrote a spoof one set in Hull. The Gun Slipped was written fast in a single draft and is one of my proudest achievements. You can see one of the ads we made at the time below. Due to inflation, this price is no longer accurate!
Anyway, book two in that series is back in the works. The Bad Heist features an all-female gang called the Forty Kites and book three is called The Tailor of Kingstown.
Please don't tell Sophie that I followed through on my promise to her. You can read more here.
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