Blog
05/05/2018
Ever since I was a boy, I’ve dreamed of being a novelist. I ground my parents down until they bought me an electric typewriter when I was about 11 years old so I could write a rip off Hardy Boys […]
17/12/2017
Does anyone value literary fiction anymore? Truth is, I haven’t been writing much recently. I often need ‘recovery time’ after finishing a novel, and The Pursuit of Ordinary was no exception. Partly, that’s due to the material I write – […]
08/10/2017
What’s in a name? Quite a lot, it turns out… The name Nigel is dying a death… as a baby name, it is on the verge of extinction. This year saw no new Nigels. Not one. As a Nigel myself, […]
01/05/2017
She doesn’t watch him all the time. She’s not weird… excerpt, Beat The Rain She started watching him shortly after she met him. Not stalking him, she’s not weird or anything. But he’s living in the flat above the […]
19/04/2017
If she’s touched his knee once, she’s touched it twenty times… excerpt, Beat The Rain The dinner party continues and Louise’s friend Alice and her new boyfriend John arrive. He seems nice to Adam in a nondescript kind of way. Not […]
30/03/2017
How readers and reviewers rewrite novels It’s been fascinating to see how readers and reviewers bring out elements of a novel you don’t see yourself – facets that, even as the author, you hadn’t fully appreciated or understood. In fact, it got […]