Alex Pearl
Location: London, UK
Facilitates workshops.
Speaks at events.
Speaks to writer groups.
Speaks to book clubs.
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Bio
Back in the distant mists of time, Alex spent three years at art college in Maidstone, a college that David Hockney once taught at and later described in a piece for The Sunday Times as the ‘most miserable’ episode of his life. Here, Alex was responsible for producing – among other things – the college’s first theatrical production in which the lead character accidentally caught fire. Following college, he found employment in the advertising industry as a copywriter. He has turned to writing fiction in the twilight years of his writing career.
His novella, Sleeping with the Blackbirds – a black, comic urban fantasy, was initially written for his children and published by Pen Press. It was long-listed by the Millennium Book Viral Awards 2018 and selected by the Indie Author Project in 2019 for distribution to public libraries across the US and Canada.
Alex’s debut thriller, The Chair Man is set in London following the terrorist attack in 2005. Self-published as an e-book, paperback and hardback, it was a Finalist in the Wishing Shelf Book Awards 2021.
His comic murder mystery, A Brand to Die For is set in the advertising world of 1983 and is, he thinks, only the second murder yarn ever to be staged in a London advertising agency; the first being Murder Must Advertise by Dorothy L. Sayers back in 1933. The sequel, One Man Down, has been taken up by Roundfire Books.
During the COVID epidemic, Alex conducted 100 author interviews in an attempt to delve into authors’ backgrounds, motivations and working methods. He self-published the interviews under the title 100 Ways to Write a Book, and all author proceeds go to PEN International.
In 2025, Alex and his brother David compiled, contributed to, and published an anthology of cricket writing entitled The Faintest of Tickles, in which novelists, journalists and those with a soft spot for the summer game contributed an eclectic collection of short stories, poetry, reminiscences, and history pieces. The Foreword was written by Daniel Norcross.
Later in 2025, Alex contributed a short story to an anthology of crime stories based on the titles of popular songs; Alex’s being My Father’s Gun by Elton John. The anthology is entitled Crime Songs and is published by Close to the Bone.
Alex’s claim to fame is that he is quite possibly the only person on this planet to have been inadvertently locked in a record shop on Christmas Eve.
Books
Sleeping with the Blackbirds
Eleven-year-old schoolboy, Roy Nuttersley, has been dealt a pretty raw deal. While hideous parents show him precious little in the way of love and affection, school bullies make his life a misery. So Roy takes comfort in looking after the birds in his suburban garden, and in return, the birds hatch a series of ambitious schemes to protect their new friend.
As with the best-laid plans, however, these get blown completely off course – and as a result, the lives of both Roy and his arch tormentor, Harry Hodges, are turned upside down. While Harry has a close encounter with God, Roy embarks on a voyage of discovery that draws in and impacts on everyone around him, including the local police, his headmaster and the national media.
Where will it all end, and will life ever be quite the same for Roy Nuttersley?
The Chair Man
Michael Hollinghurst is a successful corporate lawyer living a comfortable, suburban life in leafy North West London. But on 7 July 2005, his life is transformed when he steps on a London underground train targeted by Islamist suicide bombers. While most passengers in his carriage are killed, Michael survives the explosion but is confined to a wheelchair as a result.
Coming to terms with his predicament and controlling his own feelings of guilt as a survivor conspire to push him in a direction that is out of character and a tad reckless. In a quest to seek retribution, he resorts to embracing the internet and posing as a radical Islamist in order to snare potential perpetrators.
Much to his surprise, his shambolic scheme yields results and is brought to the attention of both GCHQ and a terrorist cell. But before long, dark forces begin to gather and close in on him. There is seemingly no way out for Michael Hollinghurst. He has become, quite literally, a sitting target.
A Brand to Die For
WORKING IN ADVERTISING CAN BE MURDER – LITERALLY.
It’s 1983. Margaret Thatcher has been waging war on the Argentinians in the Falkland Islands. The miners are about to wage war on Margaret Thatcher. And Angus Lovejoy, once sent down from Charterhouse for shagging the Chancellor’s daughter in the cricket pavilion, has now landed himself a job as a copywriter at London adland’s creative hot shop Gordon Deedes Rutter where he is teamed up with art director Brian Finkle whose neurotic Jewish parents are the bane of his life. The two are an unlikely duo, but their mischievous and sardonic take on the world makes them a brilliant creative team. Everything goes swimmingly until a bizarre and mysterious murder rocks the world of Gordon Deedes Rutter and ripples out into the national media.
While the dearth of evidence leaves the police baffled, Lovejoy and Finkle take it upon themselves to apply their creative brains to solve the mystery, and in so doing, inadvertently get themselves into particularly deep water.
One Man Down
THE TALE OF A STUMPED POLICEMAN, A THIRD MAN, AND A WELL-PLACED SHOT.
It’s 1984. Princess Diana has just given birth to her second child. The legendary comic Tommy Cooper has died on stage (quite literally). And Angus Lovejoy and Brian Finkle are gloriously oblivious to it all as they strive to enthral the nation with their television commercials for the advertising agency Gordon Deedes Rutter. But all is not as rosy as it might seem in the frenetic world of Soho. Following a disastrous presentation to a manufacturer of diarrhoea tablets, Lovejoy and Finkle let off steam by playing cricket for an old school friend – but in doing so, stumble upon a nest of vipers involving a gay vicar, a small-time antique fraudster, a photographer, and blackmail. There can only be one outcome and it’s going to entail murder.
100 Ways to Write a Book
These author interviews initiated by Alex Pearl during the Covid epidemic started as a small lockdown project. But before long, Alex’s requests for author interviews on social media elicited an overwhelming response, and the project soon took on on a life of its own.
Within these pages, authors from a wide spectrum of backgrounds wax lyrical about their backgrounds, motivations, and working methods. Among this throng, self-published newbies rub shoulders with award-winning bestsellers from all corners of the globe, including the UK, the US, Canada, Australia, Germany, New Zealand, Israel and Sri Lanka.
They provide a fascinating insight into this mysterious process of creating imagined worlds on the page.
Huge thanks go to the 100 authors who very kindly gave their time to participate in this project, as well as their consent for their words to be reproduced here in print. They are in no particular order:
Paul Waters, Jessica Norrie, David F. Ross, Drema Drudge, Chris Chalmers, Mark Farrer, Sue Clark, Hannah Tovey, Belinda Hunt, Glynn Holloway, Mark Eklid, Julian Dutton, Christopher Bowden, Alan Gibbons, Lily Mackenzie, Ian Critchley, Jadi Campbell, Tom Atkins, Jane Risdon, Charles Harris, L. C. Tyler, Fran Hill, Malcolm Knott, Nikki Dudley, Jacqui Castle, Ron Impey, C. J. Booth, Ashok Ferrey, Jennifer Irwin, Beth Duke, Vicki Olsen, Pete Langman, Pauline Morgan, Jonathan Peace, Sandy Manning, Shelley Wilson, P. J. Roscoe, Anthony Neil Smith, A. A. Chaudhuri, Jon Richter, Carolyn Hughes, Trish Moran, Madeline Dewhurst, Jeff Pollak, Louise Fein, A. B. Kyazze, Jack Byrne, M. A. Hunter, Tessa Harris, M. J. Mallon, P. R. Black, Nina Soden, Bill Arnott, E. Chris Ambrose, Paul Kane, Sam Blake, Douglas Skelton, Louise Mumford, Philip Henry, Hazel Prior, Lauren Emily Whalen, Laura E. Goodin, Simon Van der Velde, Dr. Manuel Matas, Jane Bettany, Regina Puckett, S. G. M.Ashcroft, Michele Kwasniewski, Judy Stanigar, Robert Craven, John Darling, Pramudith D. Rupasinghe, Richard Dee, Sophy Layzell, Lorna Dounaeva, Diana Stevan, Bradley Harper, Paul Gitsham, Sion Scott-Wilson, John Dean, Liz Martinson, C. J.Carver, Tony J. Forder, Sharron L. Miller, Patrick Osborne, Peter Turnham, Jude Lennon, Anna Holmes, Chris Calder, Jane Buckley, Rachel Brimble, Gail Aldwin, Anne Coates, Ian Riddle, Christina Hamlett, James Morgan-Jones, Alison Huntingford, Gila Green, Helen Pryke, Emilya Naymark, Marcia Clayton, James L’Etoile, Edward Trayer, Mark Leichliter, Lindsay J. Sedgwick, David Liscio, Kate Reynolds
ALL AUTHOR PROCEEDS WILL BE DONATED TO PEN INTERNATIONAL
Random Ramblings of a Short-sighted Writer
“This eclectic selection of pieces penned by the author Alex Pearl, won’t fail to move and amuse. Many originally appeared on his website as well as the pages of The Huffington Post. This new updated edition includes more recent articles and is fully illustrated. Whether conveying the eccentricities of village cricket, the quirkiness of British advertising, or the surprising hospitality of hotels in North Korea, Pearl’s prose will draw you in and leave you wanting to come back for more.”
Hugh Salmon, playwright and co-founder of Lovereading.co.uk
The Faintest of Tickles
“In this beautifully curated anthology, authors and writers who might never normally do so are given free rein to train their gaze on this most full-bodied of sporting muses. What results is a reminder that truly nothing in life cannot be improved with a generous dollop of cricket.”
Daniel Norcross
This eclectic collection of short stories, reminiscences, essays, and poems will appeal to anyone with a soft spot for the noblest of summer games. Besides being entertained and amused by this compilation, the reader will discover some interesting and little-known cricketing facts such as Adolf Hitler’s view of the game.
Alongside a Foreword penned by Daniel Norcross, contributors to this attractive addition to the rich canon of cricket writing include:
● John Corcut ● Bud Craig ● Judith Cutler ● Jessica Davis ● Geoffrey Dean ● Robert Deighton ● Isabelle Duncan
● Laura E. Goodin ● Pete Langman ● Ben Macintyre ● M. J. Mallon ● Jonathan Margolis ● Sean O’Leary ● Ann Parker
● Alex Pearl ● David Pearl ● Hugh Salmon ● Paul Stewart ● Sarah Traynor ● David Whittle ● Peter Wise ● David Alan Woods
All authors’ royalties are being donated to Surrey County Cricket Club’s charity foundation.
Crime Songs
A stellar cast of sixteen crime writers bring you their crime stories inspired by Tom Waits, Blondie, The Clash, Lana Del Rey, AC/DC and more. Bestselling, indie and transgressive writers combine to give you dark, noir, cozy and all possibilities in between. Make Crime Songs your number one.
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