Comma Press: Writing Short Crime Fiction Course

I’m so excited to be teaching a new online writing course for Comma Press starting in May. You can book tickets for it here. About the course: This online writing course will give you the skills to write a great crime story. You will practice crafting memorable characters, writing believable dialogue, and bringing the world of your crime story compellingly […]

That Lockdown Novel

It had to be done. During the Lockdown, while everyone was busy homeschooling their kid and teaching their cat ballet and writing their Lockdown novel… I was doing the same (substitute dog for cat and close-up magic for ballet). Mine comes at the Lockdown from a slant, mind you. It’s as much about plants, climate change and the environment as […]

The Lure of Abandoned Places

My follow-up to The American Girl is a mystery novel about Dark Tourism, a subject I’ve been fascinated in for the last few years. Dark Tourism is defined as “travelling to places associated with death and suffering”, although it’s not invariably as creepy as that sounds. Like any kind of travel, it has its good and bad sides, from people […]

Korean Translation of The American Girl

I was excited to find out that my novel, The American Girl, was going to be translated into Korean by the lovely people at Tomato Publishing. I’m even more thrilled now that I have my hands on the book. It really is the most gorgeous-looking cover… I’m also intrigued by all the footnotes explaining Twin Peaks, French food and Johnny […]

Recent Interviews

Here are a couple of recent interviews from the publicity for The American Girl. I really enjoyed doing these. The Killer Inside My Holiday Killer Reads Interview When Life Is Creepier Than Fiction The Strand Magazine

Virtual Book Tour

I’m excited to announce the dates for the virtual book tour for The American Girl. See the banner above for the where and when of upcoming reviews of my new novel coming from a range of amazing and talented reviewers.

The Secret Mother

It was a great pleasure to interview Victoria Delderfield at the launch of her debut novel, The Secret Mother, at Urmston Library in Manchester on Wednesday night – an event hosted by the lovely people from Urmston Bookshop. Vicky and I took the Creative Writing MA at Lancaster at the same time and she workshopped parts of her novel on the course. I remember […]

Gothic Tales & Short Stories

I had a lovely time at Waterstones in Lancaster last week reading from my work alongside the wonderful Zoe Lambert, author of The War Tour. Zoe read a riveting and thought-provoking story ’33 Bullets’, in which “a Kurdish academic flees persecution and while imprisoned in a UK detention centre still tries to write an article about the poet Ahmed Arif, […]

Northwest Literary Salon Reading Event

Gothic Tales & Twitter Stories The lovely Naomi Kruger and Yvonne Battle-Felton of the Northwest Literary Salon have invited me to give a reading at their next event, which will  take place at 7pm on the 4th of September in Waterstones in Lancaster. Naomi and Yvonne will introduce readings from myself and novelist Paul McVeigh. Paul will be reading from his  first novel The […]

The American Girl

What she can’t remember, they’ll never forget I’m excited to announce that my second novel, The American Girl, is coming out with William Morrow (US) and HarperCollins (UK) in July 2016. The novel draws on my teenage adventures staying in the South of France as an exchange student and a description of it is now up on the HarperCollins site. Here is […]