When did you first start writing?
As a kid. My uncle was a TV screenwriter and did shows like The Avengers, Department S, Danger Man, Randall and Hopkierk (Deceased). He went on to write a few thrillers, too. I guess I always wanted to be like him. I tried writing fiction at school and again at university but wasn't any good at it. It was only after I'd worked as a journalist for ten years that I had the necessary skills to write a novel. They say that it takes 10,000 hours to acquire any skill and I definitely believe that's true in the case of writing.
What motivated you to become an indie author?
My regular publisher had consistently turned down several of my books, so they languished in my desk drawer and then on various hard drives. When ePublishing came onto the scene I was in the perfect position to take advantage of it. I had a backlist that was already selling well, I had two new books a year being published by Hodder and Stoughton, and I had new novels that I could publish myself. I started self publishing in the summer of 2010 and with six months I had three self-published eBook bestsellers on my hands - Once Bitten, The Basement and Dreamer's Cat. In the first year alone I sold more than half a million eBooks and now my total eBook sales are close to two million.
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