A few days ago, I was interviewed for Local Heroes at the Beerhouse in Market Harborough. The atmosphere was very relaxed and the interviewers – Dave Hall and Joff Brown – asked a whole range of questions about how I got started as an author, my inspirations, my writing process, how I deal with the […]

I was contacted recently by Will Musser, a composer in the States who writes music for film and TV, asking if he could write a piece for my Odysseus books. Being a huge fan of film music, I couldn’t turn down the opportunity. He came back to me with a theme that was six minutes […]

One thing I love about writing is visualising a scene in my head and trying to capture it in words. The author’s job is to get the reader to forget where they are and what’s going on around them, and absorb them fully in the events and characters on the page. With writing mythology, that […]

I visited my publisher again this week. We discussed the edit of Wrath of the Gods, the second instalment in my Heracles series, which could be released as early as late October. We also talked about a new cover for Son of Zeus – something with more action and drama than the current artwork. This […]

George Lucas said about writing the original script for Star Wars: “When I sit down, I bleed on the page, and it’s just awful… It’s a terrible way to live. But I do it; I sit down and I do it. I can’t get out of my chair until five o’clock or five thirty… It’s […]

Yesterday, I went to the opening of the newest exhibition at Leicester’s New Walk Museum. I first went to the museum when I was a boy in the 1970s and fell in love with the displays of dinosaur skeletons and ancient Egyptian artefacts. It used to have a pair of big Russian guns out front, […]

In a few week’s time I’ll be in Disneyland California. I watched a few Disney films as a kid in the 1970s, but it wasn’t their best period (compare the quality of artwork for Aristocats, Robin Hood and Pete’s Dragon with what came before and after) so I didn’t become a big fan. That all […]

Feedback. Love it or loathe it, as an author you certainly can’t ignore it. When I was first published, my fragile ego was so terrified of bad reviews and feedback that I would ask my wife to read everything first. Nowadays, I’m more thick skinned. Not that it isn’t disheartening to receive a negative comment, […]

I’ve received an update from Canelo about launching Son of Zeus in paperback. As mentioned in previous posts, Canelo specialise in publishing e-books and have not yet ventured into the world of producing hard copies. To do this, they have to partner with a company that can produce print copies. They also have to set […]

I’m suffering a rare bout of writer’s block at the moment, which I put down to lack of sleep. The second Heracles book is as good as finished and 95% edited, but I’ve decided to write a new prologue from scratch and am getting nowhere with it. I’ve already wasted two days on it, and […]

I once thought it would be a good idea to write a book about the deaths of some of history’s greatest writers. Long before the days of PCs and the internet, I’d stumbled across a few stories of the untimely demises of several authors and decided to keep notes. I’ll never write that book now, […]

Ten years ago this week I became a published author. The launch party for King of Ithaca took place on Friday 5th June in my local branch of Waterstones. I gave a speech in front of nearly 90 people and signed lots of copies of the book that I had started nine years earlier. Afterwards, […]

I took my eldest daughter to see the Crown Jewels at the weekend. It was a warm, sunny day, and rather than the two hours I’d expected to spend at the Tower of London, we spent five. We joined a tour by a Yeoman of the Guard – a beefeater – who informed us that […]

If you live in the UK, you probably got woken up at 3am by a violent and noisy thunderstorm. I watched it with my wife from our bedroom window, soon to be accompanied by the kids. The lightning was coming down every four or five seconds at one point, and the thunder was loud enough […]

      I watched the royal wedding with my family today. Beautiful weather, gorgeous setting, lots of pageantry – a great advertisement for England and the UK. I also liked the American flavouring – a passionate sermon from Bishop Curry, and I loved the choir singing Stand By Me. Nice, also, to think that […]

The fun thing about writing a series of books is that you’re always looking ahead. I’m still working on the second book in my Heracles trilogy, but I’ve also been looking ahead to some of the labours he will face in the third. This week I’ve been considering Geryon and the tenth labour. Geryon was […]

Back in the 90s, I read Men Without Women, a collection of short stories by Ernest Hemingway about boxers, big game hunters, matadors and other blokes doing macho things in macho situations. Well, this week I’ve been looking ahead to the third book in my Heracles trilogy. One of his later labours was to acquire […]

This week’s highlight was the Canelo Authors Party. I travelled down by train to London, then took the Tube to Blackfriars Road. After getting a bit confused about where the party was located, I saw my editor through the window of a restaurant and went in. I was quarter of an hour early, but it […]

A very late blog this week, so apologies for the delay. I visited Cambridge last weekend for a get together with my old housemates from university. It’s now 21 years since we graduated and we all live in different parts of the country, but we still catch up with each other once a year. Strangely, […]

Monday sees the launch of Son of Zeus, the first in my new Heracles trilogy. My Odysseus series has taken up so much of my life (I started planning King of Ithaca back in 1999) that it seems strange to be embarking on a new adventure, but I’m very much looking forward to it. I’m […]