I’m a writer from East Yorkshire, and my stories begin here.

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I spent the first few years of my life in East Hull but I grew up in Cherry Burton, a small village outside Beverley. I spent many years travelling and teaching English around the world before I came back. 

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My books are all set in Hull, the East Riding and out on the North Sea. I’ve written gangland thrillers set on the streets of Hull, historical novels that go back to eighteenth-century Yorkshire, and seafaring stories inspired by the generations of people who sailed from this part of the country.

 

The books might be very different, but the things that interest me are usually the same: ordinary people, difficult circumstances, and the places that shape them. I'm interested in people more than heroes and villains. My characters tend to be flawed, sometimes damaged and frequently capable of making a complete mess of things. Like me.

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Place matters to me too. Hull and the East Riding aren't just backgrounds to my stories. The streets, estates, pubs, villages, docks and coastline are part of them.

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When I'm not writing, I teach English in Hull, run, and play washboard in the punk skiffle band Black Kes.

I've travelled a fair bit of the world, but somehow I keep coming back here.

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And I keep finding stories.