A portrait of author Ray Clark by publisher Erik Empson I know I’ll get on well with Ray as soon as I discover that, like me, he is holding out against getting a smartphone. This puts him in the self-elected class of the socially disadvantaged where achieving small things like buying a parking ticket or […]

A portrait of writer Bud Craig, who goes with the flow by publisher, Erik Empson Bud is a little guarded when we first meet. Maybe he’s been reading the previous author profiles I’ve written and is concerned about whose clumsy hands he has fallen into. Slightly frail and shrunken after winning rounds with cancer and […]

A portrait of Met detective turned writer Ian Robinson by publisher Erik Empson It was with some trepidation that I travelled to meet Ian Robinson – before becoming a writer much of his working life was spent with the police. With my misspent youth and all, when I’d previously encountered the boys in blue up […]

A portrait of popular crime fiction writer John Dean by publisher, Erik Empson After an elbow bump with John outside, I am welcomed into his house by his wife, Frances, and their daughter, Laura, who is back during university reading week, and immediately made to feel at home. Their eldest child, Michael, does not get […]

A portrait of bestselling Scottish mystery writer, Pete Brassett by publisher, Erik Empson Following the seismic shifts in the publishing industry over the last decade, one tendency has been for the onus of responsibility for promotion to shift from publishers onto authors themselves. With academic books this has led to such absurdities as “proper” publishers […]