Coming Soon!

The Day The Earth Turned (Books 1-4)

This story was an unexpected surprise and one that has grown rapidly in size, meaning and impact. I wrote a short story called A Mother’s Story, which appears in my latest release The Old Friend – A Collection of Tales and Poems This is going to be an epic YA horror/post-apocalyptic series and I have the feeling it will pull me in and keep me prisoner for a long time… UPDATE: I am in the final editing stage of all four books and in discussions about book covers. The first book Summer will be released on 6th June 2023 and the subsequent books will be released throughout the year, in Autumn, Winter and then finally Spring 2024. If you want to know more all you have to do is sign up to my author newsletter here… Author Newsletter

The Fortune’s Well trilogy 

This was another unexpected surprise. My business partner author Sim Sansford messaged me in December 2020 asking if I had ever considered writing a book with another author because he had an idea…as we have got on so well working together since November, I said, why not? Writing with another author was something I had never thought I would do but I thought why not give it a go? Within six weeks we had written an entire book together, which rolled instantly into book 2…UPDATE OCTOBER 2022 – Book One, Hangman’s Revenge and Book Two, Project Pandora are both now available to buy in ebook and paperback! Book Three, Days End will be released in December 

The Mess Of Us – sequel to The Mess Of Me

Roughly two years ago I started getting ideas for a sequel to The Mess Of Me. I was working on other things at the time so I just noted some plot ideas in a notebook and left it for a while. A few months later I was deep in an editing bubble and really needed something fresh to write, so I grabbed the notebook and started writing this sequel in longhand. I got about two thirds of it done before I then had to concentrate on other things, but once my final edits of The Day The Earth Turned series are done, this is the next book I will finish, polish up and publish. It needs to be released ahead of At Night We Played In The Road and The Dark Finds You because that makes sense in the universe timeline. I should return to the first draft of this and get the first draft done in the next few weeks.

The Boy With The Thorn In His Side spin-off book

Working title – At Night We Played In The Road

In The Boy With The Thorn In His Side – Part 5 I introduced two brothers called Tom and Alfie Lane. They play a fairly important role in the storyline of that book and I fell in love with their characters. Gradually their back story came to me, and their characters grew and grew in my head until I had a book. I couldn’t resist plotting it out in a notebook alongside character bios and even fourteen rough chapters. I so want to write this book! But it has to wait it’s turn. I do think I will write the odd bit here and there too, I just can’t resist it! UPDATE JUNE 2022 – I couldn’t resist and started writing a rough first draft about year ago and now I am writing it on the laptop after transferring those notes to Word. It is still in first draft status, and I think I am about half way through. UPDATE OCTOBER 2022 – I finished the first draft and it will now wait a while to get its second, as I have to release these books in universe order!

Crossover Book – The Dark Finds You

I blame Sim for this one but he loved the Holds End trilogy so much he kept asking for another book. Eventually, despite trying not to, I ended up getting a few ideas about Bill Robinson and what he could be up to. As I drew to the end of At Night We Played In The Road, I started to get ideas as to what could happen to Danny next (main protagonist of The Boy With The Thorn In His Side series and appears towards end of spin-off book At Night We Played In The Road) I was also thinking about finally finishing the sequel to The Mess Of Me and I suddenly realised how characters from all these books could appear in one altogether. They are already linked as some of them already pop up or are mentioned in each other’s books, so it was really easy to create a plot they would all be realistically involved in. I suddenly had the entire plot in my mind so quickly wrote the whole thing down. It involves characters from The Mess Of Me, Elliot Pie’s Guide To Human Nature. the Holds End Trilogy and The Boy With The Thorn In His Side series… Of course, once I had written the plot I found it impossible to ignore so I started writing it, even though I really shouldn’t have! When it flows though, you can’t really ignore it. So, I went the flow and this book practically wrote itself. I finished it at the end of September and I think it took a record 6 weeks to write! Of course, that’s a rough first draft and in the future it will need countless drafts and revisions to get it right, but for now the story is out of my head and it will now have to wait its turn.

Black Hare Valley (series)

This story was not meant to happen for years but it has jumped the queue quite brazenly and I am now writing it in longhand in notebooks at the same time I am writing The Boy With The Thorn In His Side spin off book. Some days I write a bit for both but quite often I alternate between them, working on one one day and the other the next day. It all started a few years ago after both my son and I had re-read Stephen King’s It. I suddenly really wanted to write a book set in a strange little town where kids have to battle some kind of evil. That was all I really had but my son helped me create a huge, complex map for this town called Black Hare Valley. That obviously led to character bios and plot ideas and themes. I kept it all in a notebook and put it to one side as I was already working on enough books! Then, February this year (2022) we had a five day power cut and I could not use my laptop. I had to write something, so I picked up the Black Hare Valley notebook and wrote a possible first chapter. This obviously led to a second chapter and now I have just started the fifth A4 notebook. So, it’s fair to say it is going well! UPDATE : I finished the first draft in August and I will now leave it alone until it’s turn comes around to be rewritten, edited and revised! I really enjoyed writing it though.

We Hate The Cool Kids (working title)

A while ago I was driving to my writing group when an old song came on the radio, which caused me to think about something I had forgotten about. Before I arrived at my group, I had a short story, if not a whole novel running around inside my head. It was inspired by the memories and images the song conjured up. Teenage girls. Dusty woods. Enemies. Revenge. I wrote the short story She Is… which is included in Bird People and Other Stories and I have recently started another short story, which basically takes off where She Is…ends. Update March 2019; this book really leaped into my head lately and I couldn’t ignore it anymore, so I’ve started a very rough draft in a notebook. This is jumping the queue quite a lot, and The Day The Earth Turned should really be the priority but I’m kind of used to writing more than one book at a time and I like having a long-hand project on the go, so we will see what happens! Update December 2019; I finished the first draft and really enjoyed writing this novel. I am not sure when I will start the second draft but it will be some time in 2020. Update October 2022 – as I am concentrating on The Day The Earth Turned books, I have still got back to the second draft of this one but it’s day will come!

The 7th Child

I’ve had vague ideas about this book for a few years now. At first there was no plot, I just had this dysfunctional family in my head; a large family with six now grown-up children. I knew that the oldest child, a boy, had a strange relationship and control over the youngest child, also a boy. There are three boys and three girls in the family and they have different fathers, and a mentally unstable, narcissistic mother. That was all I really had. But this one is in my head a lot and I now have a notebook on the go for it. I’m slowly getting the six children’s names and personalities. I’ve got the location and the plot. Basically these six children have all gone their separate ways in life but they come back together when their mother dies alone at the derelict farmhouse they grew up in. They have to plan and attend her funeral and while together, old rivalries come back to haunt them, rivalries which revolve around the mystery of what happened to the seventh child the mother had. I know exactly what happened but I obviously won’t spoil it!

The Ugly One (working title)

This is another book I first wrote as a teenager. I don’t have the full manuscript anymore, sadly, but I do have a fair bit of it, and the rest is in my head. At the time I got about three quarters of the way through before I gave up for reasons I cannot recall. Recently I have been thinking about the two extremely dysfunctional main characters Adam and Jude, and wondering how their story would have ended…It was a bit of a revenge thriller, and if I wrote it again I would set it in the 1990s and have it jump between their actions as teenagers, and the present day as adults. So again…watch this space but I won’t be getting to it for a very long time.

Return To The Tree Of Rebels

This is the sequel to the Tree Of Rebels. This book has been plotted to a rough extent and I have written about half of it in the first draft. This book is not calling to me at all at the moment so nothing will happen here until it does.

Journal Of The Undead

I have been obsessed with The Walking Dead since my son made me start watching it over a year ago. I am currently watching it for the second time while I wait for the new, final season to become available to me. Me and my son talk about zombies and apocalypse situations so often that I started to get an idea for a story in my head. It’s a diary style story told from the POV of a sixteen year-old boy who is alone after his mother dies during a zombie virus outbreak. He then gets chased out of his home by bad guys and goes on an epic journey to find his dad and half-brother and then get back home again. I have filled a notebook with diary entries and I have the whole thing planned out but at the moment it is not a book I am actively working on.