Eleven years ago, my career was knackered. I’d published a well received, much translated first novel and half a dozen short stories. But I couldn’t get my second novel taken anywhere. Or the third. The Young Adult market was in deep recession and nobody was buying. I’d quit my full time job three years earlier. It was beginning to look like a mistake. Then I got invited to write for a new series, Point Crime. I was commissioned to write what turned out to be the first book in the series (which fed off the success of the Point Horror series). The title I chose was controversial, but the publishers thought we could get away with it, and we did. My first novel sold a…

In my 2001 novel Festival one of the main characters is a Liverpudlian singer/songwriter called Jake. When he gets into the Glastonbury festival, the second act he sees is a young Welsh singer who’s doing a lot better than him: Matthew Jay. Jake stands at the front, watching enviously as Jay is ogled by several teenage girls. I watched Jay’s set at Glasto, partly because I’d bought his first EP and liked it, mainly because I thought he’d fit in the book. He was good, just as I described him. At the time, he seemed to be destined for big things. There was a new acoustic boom. His first album was about to come out. I couldn’t for a moment have imagined that he’d be…

I visited the house of a book reviewer the other night. He and his wife have bookshelves all over the place, on every spare bit of wall. They have a large upstairs toilet and four of us spent quite some time in there, looking at and discussing the novels in the L to P section (two walls). I borrowed two new books from the early alphabet in the bedroom (the latest by J M Coetzee and Robert Edric). But the scariest books, from a writer’s point of view, were in the spare bedroom. They weren’t on the shelves, but in two large piles, mostly paperback, from which Sue and I were invited to take our pick. That’s right, every reader’s dream. Anything you fancy, have…

I’ve been busy (re)writing lately and haven’t had the time to write anything new here for nearly a fortnight. So, to make up for that, and to thank readers for coming back, here are a few other sites that might repay a visit. I went to see The Rolling Stones at Wembley Arena last week and had a remarkably good time. My old friend Mike wrote the review above and I agree with most of what he said. Nottingham writer Stephan Collishaw has a great first novel out, called ‘The Last Girl’ and a neat web-site (it describes me as a great writer, so I guess he’s prone to exaggeration). Another Nottingham writer with a nifty new web-site is Martin Stannard. Check out some of…

I’ve finished the novel I brought with me (Magnus Mills’ splendid “The Scheme For Full Employment” a return to the form of his first two) and have an hour to kill on my last evening in Edinburgh, so here’s a quick festival report. It’s typed on our host Alan’s iBook, with its tiny keyboard, so may have more errors than normal. There’s saxaphone music playing as I type, and Sue’s reading about couturiers. Best Play: Dark Earth by David Harrower. A gripping, superbly staged state of Scotland play at the Traverse (we seemed to spend a lot of time at the Traverse), brilliantly acted, especially by John Mackay as the father. If this tours, see it. Runner Up: The Straits by Gregory Burke, which is…