Where did you grow up, and how did this influence your writing?
I grew up working class in a small mining town in the north of England. My mother always bought me books for Christmas and I read voraciously. A lot of my characters have that Yorkshire grit.
When did you first start writing?
The first thing I remember writing was a ghost story about the supposedly haunted winding wheel at a defunct coal mine. I think I was probably about 9 or 10. I've written ever since. I first started writing seriously in my twenties.
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