Publication day diary
I managed to dig out the earliest draft of my opening chapters recently, dated February 2010, a little over 3,000 days ago. It reads now, like somebody else wrote it, but countless redrafts later, it's actually out there. The build up to publication day seemed to take...
Breaking my panel duck
Less than a month to go until publication now, and it’s still all about firsts for me. I got to hold my first hardback copy of my first novel this past week, and the best part is that I got to do it at my first author event. The lovely folks at Allison & Busby...
Committing the perfect crime
Is there such a thing as the “perfect crime”, and how would you get away with it? Confession time – personally, I’ve always had a soft spot for an ending where not everyone necessarily gets their comeuppance. Books like Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn, or You by Caroline...
Location, Location, Location
Dream up a cast of interesting characters, shovel plenty of adversity at them, and how they cope makes for the bones of a story. This was my mind-set around seven years ago, when I made my first serious attempt at writing a novel. Despite being a Northerner, I chose...
What to Expect When You’re Expecting (A Book) – promoting yourself as an author
https://literaryconsultancy.co.uk/2018/02/expect-youre-expecting-book-promoting-author/
The road to publication
A severed hand is found in the freezer of Natasha Barclay’s flat. Natasha hasn’t been seen since the 1980s. Why has no one been looking for her? That’s the conundrum Detectives Jake Porter & Nick Styles face in my debut novel, What Falls Between the Cracks. Porter and...
Harrogate 2017
So, here it is, my first ever blog, and what better time to write it than the week of the Theakston’s Crime Festival. I haven’t even packed yet, so this won’t be a long rambling one. It’s exactly a year ago that I headed down to Harrogate for Creative Thursday, and...