Author Experiences
Every writer I know is asked the same questions: where do the ideas come from, how do you actually get the words down, and what happens when the first draft is terrible. These essays are my honest answers, gathered into one journey.
Follow the stops from the town that formed me through the travel industry years and the spark of memoir, then the habits, the doubts and the rewriting — and out the other side, to where the tools of the trade are changing faster than at any point in my lifetime.
The writing life, mapped.
Stop 1 · The PlaceThe Quiet Pleasure of Being a Local Author in Whitstable
Begin in Whitstable — the working harbour, shingle and high street that formed me long before life took me overseas, and still quietly correct my sentences.
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Stop 2 · The Travel YearsThe Golden Age of the British Package Holiday
Before the books came the departures board: Thomson, Cosmos and the golden age of the British package holiday, seen from inside the industry.
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Stop 3 · The SparkWhy I Had to Write Echoes of a Season — And Why I Almost Didn't
Every book begins as an itch that will not go away. This is where mine started — a summer in 1992 that waited thirty years to be written down.
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Stop 4 · The CraftMemoir Examples: Real Scenes, Simple Structures, Honest Moments
What a memoir actually is, how it differs from autobiography, and the examples worth studying before you write a word of your own.
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Stop 5 · The DisciplineSix-Word Memoirs: Small Phrases, Whole Seasons
The hardest exercise in writing is also the shortest. Six words that must carry a whole life — and what the constraint teaches you about every other sentence.
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Stop 6 · The HabitThe Notebook Habit: Why I Still Write by Hand
The single most useful practice I know: keeping a notebook, filling it badly, and trusting that the good material is hiding in the dross.
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Stop 7 · The QuietOn Solitude, and Why It Is Not Loneliness
Writing is done alone, and that is both its cost and its gift. On solitude — chosen and otherwise — and what it does to the work.
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Stop 8 · The RewriteThe Second Draft: Where the Book Actually Happens
The first draft is you telling yourself the story. The second is where the book is actually made. On the art of cutting what you love.
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Stop 9 · The FictionSpies and Storytelling: The Cold War as Literary Material
What the world of espionage teaches a novelist about tension, betrayal and the stories people tell to survive.
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Stop 10 · The FutureAI and the Writer: A Tool, Not a Replacement
The trail ends where the craft is changing fastest. What AI can do for a writer, what it cannot, and why the difference matters more than ever.
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Letters from the desk.
Notes on writing, reading and the business of books — sent monthly to the newsletter list, never more often.