Author of three popular murder mystery series, featuring Den Cooper, Devon police detective, Drew Slocombe, Undertaker and Thea Osborne, house sitter in the Cotswolds. Also "ghost writer" of the novels based on the ITV series "Rosemary and Thyme".
In total, I have had fourteen books published, with another due in July 2008 - BLOOD IN THE COTSWOLDS. The most recent is A COTSWOLD MYSTERY which is earning some very enthusiastic feedback. It has amongst its characters a celebrity performer, part rapper, part poet, called Icarus Binns. He is proving very popular with readers.
The paperback of DEATH IN THE COTSWOLDS is recently out and is selling very well.
Besides writing novels, I am also the proprietor of a small press - Praxis Books. This was established in 1992, and specialises in the writings of Sabine Baring-Gould (1834-1924) a man of very many highly interesting parts. See the PRAXIS BOOKS page of this website.
As for why I do it, well, I always wanted to write - from early childhood, I have filtered everything through the written word. Nothing and nobody is entirely safe from my habit of collecting anecdotes and experiences to be processed into a novel. However, the Cotswold series marks a change from this habit. The books are set in real villages (Duntisbourne Abbots, Frampton Mansell, Blockley, Temple Guiting and Cold Aston, so far) and a kind of "anti research" has been employed. I have made sure I never speak to anybody from those villages, so nobody can claim to be featured in one of the novels
I grew up on farms, first in Cheshire, then in Devon. It was a childhood full of powerful elemental experiences. Cruelty, death, frustration alternated with idyllic summer days, the teamwork of the harvest, the delight of the young animals. No two days were quite the same. Some of these memories have found their way into A Dirty Death, my first novel.
I live in rural Herefordshire, on a smallholding situated close to the beautiful Black Mountains. I have Cotswold sheep and a Tamworth pig - both rare breeds - and I produce all my own meat, as well as large quantities of excellent wool. Evenings are spent spinning, knitting and weaving, and commissions will be taken for big warm pure wool jumpers and jackets.
More about Praxis Books - see also separate page on this website.
The majority of Praxis titles are reissues of novels by Sabine Baring-Gould (1834-1924). He wrote 130 books, fiction and non-fiction, and was a great Victorian figure, very often claimed as the greatest individual ever to be born in Devon.
See www.sbgas.org
I am currently working on a biography of Sabine Baring-Gould, which will aim to put him firmly into context as a prominent Victorian, known as novelist, hymn writer, folksong collector, traveller, father of 15 children and very much more. There are over 40 boxes of material by and about him and his family at the Devon Record Office in Exeter, which is providing exciting new insights about the man and his work.
I am the membership secretary of the UK Crime Writers Association. LINK: www.thecwa.co.uk