Station Zero

  photo: Sarah Reeve Boredom is the most underrated of the muses. Back in 2019 I was spending a lot of time in the hospitals and nursing homes where my mother kept being incarcerated. Since she wasn’t often in a mood to chat, I entertained myself by starting to write a story in my notebook. It was all written it bits and scraps, a few lines one day and a few the next, but gradually it took on the outlines of a rather gloomy Gothic novel. Heavily inspired by the Cornish coast and by recent visits to Islay and Iceland, it was about a young man who gets summoned back to his family’s ancestral home on a remote island. I didn’t imagine anyone would want to read it, since it was more grown-up than my usual stuff and looked set to be utterly dark and depressing. Then I thought 'utterly dark' would be a good name for a character, so I changed the young man’s name to ‘Dark’ and had him arrive home to discover that he has an unexpected sort-of niece: Utterly, a castaway his late brother ...

  Authors and booksellers LOVE pre-orders. They can help booksellers to notice a new book in a very crowded market, and give them an idea of how many they’ll need to stock. So, with three weeks to go until the UK launch of my new novel, it’s time I tried to persuade you to order a copy, ideally from your local independent bookshop, who I’m sure will be glad to hear from by phone, email, or in person. Id be very grateful! If, on the other hand, you don’t have a local independent bookshop, here’s a handy link to order online . Utterly Dark   and the Face of the Deep is a fantasy story set on the imaginary island of Wildsea, somewhere off the coast of England, round about the year 1810. One of its (joke) working titles was Magic Poldark, which gives you the general idea, but many other influences have seeped into it too; there’s a lot of made-up folklore, some seaweed monsters that feel as if they’ve shambled off the wobbly set of a 1970s Doctor Who story, and a general air of ...

When Kevin arrived in the beautiful old city of Norwich, he was expecting to be met by Dan and Leanne Fridd, the owners of Bookbugs and Dragon Tales . But to his surprise, an actual bookbug and an actual dragon were waiting for him. “Hello!” said the Bookbug. “I’m Leanne and this is Dan.” “Hello!” said Kevin. “I was sort of expecting you to be human beings.” “We are!” said the Bookbug. “But we were put under a spell by a Wicked IT Consultant.” “Oh, do they do spells now?” asked Kevin. “This one does - she used to be a Wicked Witch, but there’s not much money in that these days, so she took a training course. Anyway, she turned me into a bookbug and Dan into a dragon.” “So we thought the only thing for it was to open a bookshop,” said the dragon. “Luckily,” the bookbug went on, “a Good Dog-Groomer was able to cast a counter-spell…” “She used to be a good fairy,” explained the dragon, “but she took a training course,” “She couldn’t undo the IT Consultant’s curse completely, but we ca...