About
Biographies are strange things to write.
What to include, what to leave out, wondering why anyone would really care that, for example, I had a drowning accident when I was six years old, or that I once dislocated my elbow because my dad encouraged me to jump off a rather high wall.
I could start at the beginning, perhaps. I was born in 1973 to a nurse and a trainee Methodist minister (they’re my parents, in case you’re wondering). We lived in the Cotswolds where the family grew to include two more boys and a golden labrador, though not necessarily in that order.
From the Cotswolds we then moved to Hawes in Wensleydale, a place of hills and moors, the deepest snow we’d ever known, and to us a strange love of things like cheese and cake and pie-and-pea suppers. Those were very happy days for us all and the memories I have of the place, the deep affection still, made it the natural place for me to set my DCI Harry Grimm crimes series.
After Wensleydale, we moved down to Lincolnshire, a place that makes up for the clear lack of hills with the most breath-taking skies. When I was eighteen, I then headed back up to the dales for a year to work at Marrick Priory, an outdoor education centre, then onto the Lake District, to study my degree in outdoor education.
Through all of this, I had a love of reading and of writing. I was the kid in English who’d write those really long stories, which probably didn’t make much sense, but certainly filled up the exercise books. I wrote for fun and was reminded of this by an old school friend, who told me how we used to set each other writing tasks to do during our free time.
Obviously, there were other interests beyond reading and books. I didn’t just spend my entire childhood in my bedroom hiding behind my own personal library. There was Cubs and Scouts and Boys Brigade, archery and fencing, walking, caving/potholing, climbing, shooting (air rifles and shotguns), camping.
From the Cotswolds we then moved to Hawes in Wensleydale, a place of hills and moors, the deepest snow we’d ever known, and to us a strange love of things like cheese and cake and pie-and-pea suppers. Those were very happy days for us all and the memories I have of the place, the deep affection still, made it the natural place for me to set my DCI Harry Grimm crimes series.
After Wensleydale, we moved down to Lincolnshire, a place that makes up for the clear lack of hills with the most breath-taking skies. When I was eighteen, I then headed back up to the dales for a year to work at Marrick Priory, an outdoor education centre, then onto the Lake District, to study my degree in outdoor education.
Through all of this, I had a love of reading and of writing. I was the kid in English who’d write those really long stories, which probably didn’t make much sense, but certainly filled up the exercise books. I wrote for fun and was reminded of this by an old school friend, who told me how we used to set each other writing tasks to do during our free time.
Obviously, there were other interests beyond reading and books. I didn’t just spend my entire childhood in my bedroom hiding behind my own personal library. There was Cubs and Scouts and Boys Brigade, archery and fencing, walking, caving/potholing, climbing, shooting (air rifles and shotguns), camping.
My first book was published when I was eighteen. After graduating, I moved into publishing, did a wide range of jobs, published some more books, then somehow ended up working on a salmon farm in Scotland. When the company offered me a trainee management position, I promptly left and got a job as an editor. Somewhere along the way I became a dad, moved around a bit more, and started writing children’s and teen fiction, under my own name and also as a ghostwriter. I traveled around the country doing creative writing sessions in schools, won an award. Trying to make a living that way though isn’t exactly easy, so I then moved on to running a small publishing firm on the other side of the country. And then the pandemic hit.
Work changed considerably because of this so to help myself deal with it, I started writing again. And, listening to the advice of some good writing friends of mine (Barry Hutchison/JD Kirk, Jon/JE Mayhew, Alex Smith/Gordon Alexander Smith), I decided to try writing crime.
Life is a strange, wonderful, terrifying, exciting, frustrating, surprising thing. I’m doing now something I always dreamed of, through a mix of never giving up, listening to others, taking advice, hard work, and a fair amount of luck and good fortune.
Do I have an idea of what’s around the corner? Of course not! But what I do know is that I’m having a lot of fun on the road.
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