On holidaying in book locations…

August 6, 2015

  As our annual family holiday to Corfu approaches, here are some pros and cons on holidaying somewhere you have set a novel… PROS 1. You like the place I’m not sure anyone would want to set a novel in a place they didn’t like or weren’t fascinated by. So going back there for a […]

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On the eve of flying to Boston…

June 3, 2015

Tomorrow I set off for Boston (USA, not Lincolnshire), where one of my oldest friends is getting married. I’ve been tasked with speech-making duties, so today I hit pause on Spike Book 5, and set my mind towards coming up with a pithy 5-minute summary of the groom. I’ve recently had warnings, not from the […]

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easyJet Traveller Magazine article…

June 3, 2015

I love the illustration — nothing to do with me, alas! — for this article I wrote on Gibraltar for the June edition of easyJet’s inflight magazine… http://traveller.easyjet.com/features/2015/06/how-to-find-your-tribe-in-gibraltar  

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Crimefest shortlisting for ‘Hollow Mountain’…

April 23, 2015

My wife and I alternate the early shift with our two young children, and it’s often quite a manic time. Usually, though, there’s a brief moment to scan the online news — often a fairly depressing business, as you realise you’ve just dedicated your window of respite to reading a grisly news story, or another […]

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Albania travel piece for Scotsman…

April 18, 2015

Here’s an article I wrote for the Scotsman newspaper about researching ‘Sleeping Dogs’ in Albania. It ran earlier this month on 5th April… — Looking back on my recent trip to Albania, I can say without doubt that it ruined my summer. But that hasn’t stopped me recommending the country to anyone who will listen. […]

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Spring lamb…

April 13, 2015

Well, the new book is finally out there, and now is a curious moment. No reviews, no one who’s read it apart from those naturally inclined to be favourable and spare the author’s blushes. It feels a bit like watching a new lamb gambol gaily out into the pasture, full of the joys of spring, […]

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On the egotism of writers and world events…

February 13, 2015

Writers, like footballers, are known for being fairly special when it comes to egos. Like most readers, if I love a book, I will root around for information about the writer’s life. All too often, the results chime with the ‘Never meet your heroes’ mantra – volcanic tempers, dumped spouses, neglected children. Not always, of […]

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On copyediting…

November 14, 2014

Heaving a long sigh of relief, I dropped the freshly copyedited manuscript of SLEEPING DOGS into Bloomsbury HQ yesterday. The relationship between copyeditor and author remains something of a mystery to me. No one seems to refer to the copyeditor by name — they’re just ‘The Copyeditor’, like some dead-eyed Tarantino character played by an […]

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Crime spike in Gibraltar…

October 10, 2014

Below is an article that the ‘Gibraltar Chronicle’ ran in their print edition back in August. Shows how the crime genre is booming on the Rock… —————————————————————————————————————————————————————————— People come to the Rock for many things, but literary inspiration has not always been chief among them. Yet literature permeates Gibraltar, from the earliest mythology – Hercules […]

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Seasonal short story…

September 26, 2014

As summer turns to autumn, I thought that a short story about the changing seasons might go down well. It features in a free Kindle download (link below), so if you like it, give it a go and you’ll come across brilliant tales by the likes of James Runcie, Conor Fitzgerald, Anne Zouroudi and Parker […]

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