In case you missed it, I was recently interviewed on national television in the United Kingdom prior to the launch of the new John Milton novel, Sleepers. I live and work in Salisbury, a beautiful mediaeval town that has recently found itself in the news after the attempted assassination of a Russian defector and […]
I started planning the next Milton book as I was putting the finishing touches to the last one, Redeemer. I’d been planning to write something based around the case of Alexander Litvinenko, the ex-Russian spy who was allegedly poisoned by the SVR in 2006. You might remember that case: his tea was laced with radioactive […]
One of the things that’s particularly important to me when I’m writing is that my books are as authentic as I can make them. That has led to me getting into some scrapes now and again, and it’s also meant that I have possibly limited my market a little bit. Let me give you a […]
One of the most common criticisms of The Cleaner that I see in reviews is that Milton is, basically, incompetent. The suggestion is that an operative with his particular set of skills (hat tip to Liam Neeson) would not make the elementary errors that Milton makes. His tradecraft is sometimes lacking and he leaves […]
One of the questions that I get asked most often, and one that has already been asked in the Facebook group that I set up for the purposes of this book club, is where I got my inspiration for character of John Milton. The truth is that Milton came to me fairly easily. There are […]
If you had told me four years ago that the release of The Cleaner would mark the start of my dream career as a novelist I would probably have said that you were crazy, drunk, high or a combination of all three. I was still working in the film industry then, my daughter was coming […]
The release of a new Milton book is always an exciting time for me. I love writing these books, and it is with a combination of elation and trepidation that I press that button that makes them available to readers. Thankfully, the reaction to the thirteenth Milton novel – Redeemer – has been very positive. […]
I’ve been interested in putting out a line of punchy, lightning-fast, unputdownable books for a while. Not that the Milton and Rose books aren’t those two things – readers assure me that they are – but, rather, I’ve been meaning to pen a series of shorter novellas that are designed to be read in one […]
Fifteen years ago, my first book – The Art of Falling Apart – was published by a major UK imprint. It, and my second book, Subpoena Colada, sank without trace. Hardly any sales. No reviews. The only contact I had with readers was when a friend handed me a copy of Subpoena Colada that she […]
I have been discussing my recent survey where I sent out twelve questions to all 10,000 people on my mailing list. At the time of writing, I have 1,650 people answering the questions that I posed, producing a not insubstantial sample from which we can draw some interesting conclusions. Before I get into the […]
