Criminal Behaviour?
Just Stories is my creation to showcase my books. As I said on the Welcome page, I have been writing for
almost a quarter of a century, but only in the last few years have I seen the light and begun writing what I
enjoy, and hope others do to. The last 10 years have seen an upturn in crime and mystery stories both on TV
and in print.
There has been a whole new swath of writers both male and female doing justice to the written word, including
some truly outstanding works created by the likes of PJ Tracy, Lisa Scottoline and Linda Fairstein for the
women's team, and on behalf of my team (the men) we have Jeff Lindsay, John Connelly, and well I'd like to
say me, but I can't - yet.
The whole crime genre has become more accessible to people via TV programs such as CSI (in all of its
franchises), NCIS, Law & Order, all from the good old US of A, and then the outstanding Waking the Dead,
Silent Witness and the Body Farm from here in the UK. The public now want and expect cleverer plot twists,
accurate, on the mark science, and guns that don't have a never ending supply of rounds, unlike those of cop
shows of the 1970s and 80s. The reading and viewing public wish to consume something cleverer, more slick
and above all more entertaining.
Having spent the last dozen or so years consuming the sterling works of the writers mentioned above and
absorbing, almost at a cellular level, those outstandingly good TV dramas, I felt it was time to have a go
myself.
Reading has been a passion for me for my entire adult life. I have always got at least three books on the go at any one time, over and
above the one I am reading to my youngest daughter (I stopped reading to my eldest when she hit about 12 years old and it stopped
being cool for her). I always have a book for traveling, a book by the bed, and a book for the smallest room.
The great Stephen King once said, that he believed it impossible to write anything worthwhile if you didn't read, and I absolutely agree
with him. Reading is inspiration, it is food and drink to the mind of a writer. I guess you thought the this page was going to be about
me, and it is, sort of. It tells you the important stuff about me. It says I'm passionate about writing, hell I've been doing it longer than
about fifth of the population of the world have been alive. But here's the rub, I've been writing books that no one ever reads.
Seriously. When was the last time that you picked up the instructions for anything and read them? Thought so. So even knowing that
I could probably have filled these texts with "blah blah blah" and no one would even notice, I still continued to write, with verve, with
care and above all with passion.
So ask yourself this: if I put that amount of passion, effort and care into something I was convinced hardly anyone would read, how
much of care and passion did I put into stuff I want people to read and enjoy. You figure it out.