The Blog
The latest witterings
The Toys Every 1980s Kid Begged For at Christmas
Every November, roughly when the tinsel appeared in Woolworths, an entire generation of British children launched a campaign of psychological warfare against their parents. One objective. The…
Continue reading →How Much Do Authors Really Earn?
Of all the questions people ask when they discover what I do for a living, the one they actually want answered is rarely the one they say out loud. They ask where my ideas come from, or…
Continue reading →Famous Authors Who Racked Up Dozens of Rejections
There exists no lonelier document than a rejection letter. It’s essentially a receipt for something you never bought. I know this not from receiving them, oddly enough, but from…
Continue reading →What Life Cost in 1985 (When 77p Bought You a Pint)
I spend an unhealthy amount of my working life in the past. Not literally; my GP would have something to say about that. But a fair chunk of my fiction lives there, and you cannot drop a…
Continue reading →If You Could Go Back, What Age Would You Return To? (Think Carefully Before Answering)
I’ve spent the best part of a decade asking this question for a living. Every time travel novel I’ve written starts from the same itch: if someone handed you a return ticket to your…
Continue reading →Books Like The Time Traveler’s Wife (10 Love Stories That Refuse to Stay in One Decade)
The cruelty of The Time Traveler’s Wife is that it makes you fall in love with two people who keep losing each other through no fault of their own. Henry vanishes mid-sentence. Clare keeps…
Continue reading →How Long Does It Take to Write a Novel? (And Why “It Depends” Is the Only Honest Answer)
It is the question every novelist fields more than any other, usually from someone you half-remember from school who has resurfaced on Facebook after decades of total silence. “Saw you…
Continue reading →The 10 Worst Things About Being an Author
2026 marks the tenth anniversary of my first novel, The ’86 Fix, landing on Amazon’s virtual shelves. Sitting here now, ten years on, I still find it hard to believe that I make up…
Continue reading →Books Like Replay by Ken Grimwood: 8 Time-Loop Novels for Anyone Who’d Like Another Go
There’s a particular thought that creeps in around 2am, prompted by nothing more sinister than a lukewarm cup of tea and a Facebook message from someone you last spoke to in Year 11. If…
Continue reading →Best Books About a Stranger Who Changes Your Life: 12 Novels Featuring the Mysterious Helper
There’s almost always someone like this. A neighbour who arrived with shepherd’s pie the week of the funeral. A taxi driver who said something on the way back from the hospital…
Continue reading →How to Sell More Books: The One Thing That Actually Works
This morning, I happened to stumble upon a post in a Facebook group for authors. A chap with a single novel to his name, asking the assembled wisdom of the internet how to sell more books…
Continue reading →Books Like 11.22.63: 13 Novels for Stephen King’s Time Travel Fans
Few time travel novels carry the unique weight of Stephen King’s 11.22.63. Jake Epping, a high school English teacher in modern Maine, discovers a portal at the back of a diner that…
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