Behind the Scenes

Writing Kill Me Twice: When the Setting Becomes the Character Some ideas arrive with a complete set of instructions. This wasn’t one of those. What I had, at the start, was a skeleton — barely even that. Hard-boiled detective fiction. Liverpool. A protagonist who was damaged in the specific way that interesting protagonists tend to be damaged: not heroically, not cinematically, but in the grinding, managed way of someone carrying injuries that haven’t healed and probably won’t. An ex-cop doing PI work above a bookmaker’s in Kensington. The bones of something, waiting for the thing that would make it worth writing. ...

Writing The Signal I’ve wanted to write a novel about the Second World War for as long as I can remember. That novel is still somewhere in the future. But when the idea for The Signal started forming, it pulled me back further — back to the mud of Flanders, back to 1917, back to a war that feels, in some ways, more remote and more strange than the one that followed it. ...

I write novels as a hobby. You can do this for FREE, but I spend about £17 a month on tools to make it easier. I don’t expect to be published by a major house. I don’t measure success by sales or reviews. I write because the act of creating stories matters to me. And that’s the whole point. The Pressure Isn’t the Problem. The Barriers Are. There’s a lot of noise around writing. You should query agents. You should chase bestseller status. You need to be disciplined. You need natural talent. You need formal training. ...

There’s a particular kind of welcome that comes with returning to a series you’ve already built. The world doesn’t need explaining to you anymore—you know the weight it carries, the rules that govern it, the exceptions that make those rules interesting. You know Mick Hargraves and Diana Reeves. You know what they’ve survived. But returning to them with a new case, a new threat, means asking: what hasn’t been tested yet? What question about this universe have we left unanswered? ...

When I set out to write The Hound — the first prequel in The Mythic Symbiote Series — the words arrived with a generosity I’ve rarely experienced. Celtic mythology, Cú Chulainn, the alien suit finding a host in a seven-year-old boy: the story seemed to want to be told, and it came quickly, with momentum and heat. The Dragon had no such arrangement with me. Vlad III — Vlad Țepeș, Vlad the Impaler — was a man I had already established in the main series as one of the suit’s darker hosts. I knew what he was. What I underestimated was how difficult he would be to write. Every time I leaned into the historical record, into the cold methodical arithmetic of the man’s actual decision-making, the prose became what I can only describe as a thorough manual on fifteenth-century Romanian governance. Accurate. Comprehensive. Entirely without horror. ...

I recently finished a new novel that launches an entirely new series. At its heart is an ancient Atlantean artefact: an amulet containing a technological suit of armour. The opening book is set in modern-day Manchester and follows the suit’s new bearer as she discovers not only its power, but its sentience. The armour is not simply a tool. It questions. It reacts. It forms opinions. That awakening — and the moral tension it creates — becomes the spine of the story. ...

In this exclusive interview, we dive deep into the intricate metaphysical framework underpinning the “Black Eyes and Broken Souls” series. The author shares insights on crafting a supernatural horror world from an agnostic perspective, their unique approach to demons and angels, and the literary influences that shaped this distinctive universe. Interviewer: Your metaphysical framework in “Black Eyes & Broken Souls” presents a fascinating alternative to traditional religious horror. What was your primary goal in creating this system? ...

In the shadowy corners of London, where streetlights struggle against persistent rain and ancient buildings harbor secrets older than their foundations, Michael “Mick” Hargraves is fighting demons. Literally. “Black Eyes & Broken Souls” introduces us to Mick—an ex-detective turned private investigator whose career ended after a devastating case involving a child killer. When we meet him, he’s drowning his guilt in bourbon, his promising career reduced to checking on cheating spouses and tracking down petty thieves. ...

When I began outlining my newest novel “Dead Hand Rising,” I faced a creative challenge that many writers of superhuman characters encounter: how do you create compelling tension when your protagonist has seemingly limitless physical abilities? Dave Anderson has demonstrated extraordinary capabilities throughout the series - invulnerability, super strength, speed, and more recently, adaptations from a fungal enhancement that improved his resistance to cold and environmental threats. With each book, the challenge becomes finding obstacles worthy of his abilities without resorting to increasingly outlandish scenarios. ...

Sometimes the most compelling story ideas come from unexpected places. For me, the seed of “The Quantum Vulnerability” was planted during a frustrating afternoon trying to pay for a subscription service that only accepted bitcoin. As I navigated the complexities of cryptocurrency transactions, my writer’s mind began to wander: What if someone could manipulate these digital currencies at their most fundamental level? This thought experiment coincided with the rising discussions about quantum computing’s potential to break current encryption methods. The intersection of these two technologies - cryptocurrency and quantum computing - sparked the core concept for Book 8 in the Dave Anderson series. But what began as a technology-focused plot soon evolved into something much more personal, both for the characters and for me as a writer. ...