My ideal writing day begins at ten, after a leisurely breakfast of something freshly baked and an hour alone with the newspapers. After that, I settle in with a pot...

Combine what has never been combined before. I don’t remember who said this or where I read that quote but it inspired me. When I first started writing my novel...

19 July, 2018 was the 26th anniversary of the murder of the anti-mafia magistrate Paolo Borsellino at the hands of Cosa Nostra. As I watched the usual TV documentaries, listening...

Usually when leaving my kids’ bedroom at 3am, all that’s going through my mind are a series of expletives interspersed with ‘Sleep, SLEEP. I need more sleep’. Yet one night,...

In October a couple of years ago, I met a writer friend in a café. I had finished a writing project a few months previous and was itching to start...

Around about eighteen months ago, I found myself seized by something close to panic.  I had just finished final edits on my debut novel, The Last Lost Girl and I...

I first came across Carmen Marcus while googling working class writers. It’s an issue close to my heart and other than Kit de Waal, Sheena Wilkinson and Dave Lordan, there...

Three years ago, epilepsy struck our family out of the blue. I won’t go into details but I will say that it happened to someone I love very dearly. I...

This I Would Kill For…”This” doesn’t exist, because you’d never kill anyone, right? Or would you? When I ask this question at talks, there is a general murmur before a...

OK I know this is a FIRST WORLD PROBLEM completely. Still, the pain of writing my second novel has been immense. I remember attending Harrogate in the summer of 2016, my...