I was ten when I discovered that there were two types of books. Some books were classed as “literature” and others were not. Literature seemed to be the books I was expected to read, and the latter, books that would draw a frown from friends and teachers who’d decided the title didn’t qualify for the…
Part of the backstory of both The Medway Wolf and Ghosts of Oaklight Hall is an alternate timeline featuring a recent war between the United States and the British Empire. That doesn’t mean I’m anti-American: I most definitely am not. I wanted my main character in The Medway Wolf to be someone recovering from the…
No Coming Out Story to Tell In some ways, I have no coming out story since it was never really an issue for me. And I think that had a significant influence on what I want to write and how I approach writing gay characters. I always knew I was different, even before I learned…
Probably the most unexpected influence on the writing of The Medway Wolf is Stephen Tennant — or, more properly, the Honourable Stephen Tennant — a minor and generally useless aristo who died in 1987. I have no love of the British aristocracy, but I developed a fascination for the character after reading the fascinating biography…
So why did I write a story about werewolves? A central part of the inspiration for The Medway Wolf came from watching a news item a few years ago, which was about unscrupulous dog breeders who keep a bitch permanently pregnant and then dump her when she can no longer produce puppies. My anger at…
What writer doesn’t like to read as well? As a child I feasted on fairytale stories subconsciously altering the heroines into other boys like me. In my head I was the handsome prince rescuing another prince from the clutches of the evil queen or slaying dragons so that we could be together. As I grew…
I first began to dabble with writing in my late teens. Mainly because it felt like being an author might be the only thing I could ever be good at. At school, I had no patience to master a musical instrument, and my attempts at portrait drawing were met by my art teacher’s comment, “I’d…