ABOUT ME

What did you want to be when you grew up?

An astronaut. I still want to be an astronaut.  Funny thing is, if I’m prepared to sell everything we own and move to a small caravan in the Scottish highlands, it’s a totally achievable goal!  Negotiations with the family are ongoing.

When did you realize you wanted to be a writer?

August 2012.  I’ve always had a vague desire to write but, you know… life.  Too busy with this and that to do anything about it. I was in London for the Olympics and visiting with my sister, who couldn’t understand why I hadn’t written a book already.  She was so enthusiastic about the idea, I ended up thinking, “Well, why not?  How hard can it be, really?”  Hard, in case you’re wondering!  It’s been a long, strange trip, littered with “practice” manuscripts and a wall full of rejections, but here we are.

Do you have any hobbies?

I took up the piano very late in life.  My son is a pretty good piano player and, from age nine, I’ve watched him skate by on zero to a few minutes’ practice a week.  I figured if I at least practised 30 minutes every day I might end up half as good after 10 years, which would be fine by me.  I like to think I’m on track.

I’m also an enthusiastic bike rider.  I believe the term is “MAMIL”: Middle Aged Man In Lycra.  I look ridiculous, but it keeps the stress levels down and some (only some!) of the weight off.

What was your first job?

Between high school and university, I spent a year working as a trainee signalling and telecoms engineer for what was then British Rail.  There was a lot of digging.  And not earth, which is easy, but stones.  Lots and lots of stones.  All those stones that a rail line sits on is called ballast (don’t ask me why!) and you have to dig through it before you can get anything done.  I spent the first week or two blistering my hands and watching my shovel skid in every direction but down.  Don’t let anyone tell you that digging a railway is unskilled labour: there’s a real knack to it.

In terms  of your writing, what’s the most influential book you’ve ever read?

Yikes!  I think every time you ask me a question like that, you’ll get a different answer!  However, doing the best I can, I’m going to say Masters of the Vortex by E. E. “Doc” Smith.  No one’s heard of him today, but if there was a giant of SF before the likes of Asimov and Heinlein and Arthur C. Clarke, it would be him.  Masters of the Vortex was the seventh and last book in his Lensman series, the oldest of which (Triplanetary? I can’t be bothered to look it up) was written as a serialized novel in the 1930s.  If you read them today and make allowances for the era in which they were written, you will have the joy of discovering the granddaddy of all space operas.   Anyway, I was nine years’ old and away at some camp and a much older boy lent me this battered copy he happened to have.  It was a Panther paperback, I remember, and cost 25 or 35p (!!!!!) and I was hooked.  I’d seen SF on TV, but I’d never read it before.  It’s been a lifelong obsession ever since.

Do you have a favorite spot for writing?

Not really, though I do like to write in public spaces.  I’m a bit like my cat: I don’t necessarily want to interact with people, but I do like to be around them.  Apart from my home office, if I have one place where I write more than any other, it’s my local coffee shop.  It’s loud as all heck, but I have noise cancelling headphones and endless hours of white noise courtesy of You Tube.  Plus coffee, obviously.  What’s not to like?

Where did the inspiration for Braking Day come from?

I grew up reading some of the classic “generation ship” novels, like Robert Heinlein’s Orphans of the Sky, and Captive Universe by Harry Harrison.  These are books where crew discipline has broken down in the distant past and the degraded societies that result are kept alive only by the magical technology of the ship.  I got to thinking about what would happen if the ship started to break down but crew discipline did not.  What would that look like?  And how would a crew that knew nothing but the ship deal with the prospect of journey’s end? 

How do you approach worldbuilding?

I start by having a couple of ground rules and asking a bunch of questions.  For Braking Day, I wanted to write a “hard SF” story about interstellar travel, so what we know about physics had to apply.  That’s ground rule one: no warp drive, no artificial gravity.  And the second rule was there would be no sleeping on the job: no one was sliding into a suspended animation pod and waking up fresh as a daisy 100 years later.  Consequences flow from that: the journey is long, the ship has to have a rotating habitat to provide gravity, the crew that reaches journey’s end has never even seen a planet, never mind stood on one.  Already you have a little proto-world of imagination that can be fleshed out by answering questions like, what sort of people would start a journey like that?  Why?  How would society evolve in a confined environment surrounded by hard vacuum and interstellar radiation?  How would someone whose entire world is the confines of a starship react to the prospect of getting off?  In a surprisingly short time you have the framework for a brand new, but somehow lived-in world.  And all you need is a framework, not the whole schmeer.  As you start writing, your characters will make you answer newer, more nuanced, questions.  All you have to do is answer them in a way that’s consistent with the framework you’ve already created and, voila! your worldbuilding is complete – at least, it’s complete until your agent and editor start asking questions you hadn’t even thought about!

Which of the characters in Braking Day is most like you?

Oh dear.  No one would put me, or anyone like me, in a novel.  I’m literally far too dull for words.

What is your favorite scene in Braking Day?

I’m not sure about reading, but I really enjoyed writing a scene that involves Ravi and Boz and a lanyard. 

If you lived in the world of Braking Day, what category of crewman would you be?

I’d like to say something uplifting like an engineer or medic.  But the brutal truth is that I’d be in ShipSec.  I’m a trial lawyer by training, so interrogating people is second nature!

Ideally, how would you spend a rainy Sunday?

I would ride my bike, write for a couple of hours, then stretch out on the sofa with a good book and a cup of tea.  And if the sun were shining, my ideal Sunday would look exactly the same!

What makes you laugh out loud?

Toddlers, because they have so much joy.  And the Scottish men’s football team, because it’s better than crying.

Who is your favorite fictional character?

Buffy the vampire slayer: the Sarah Michelle Gellar version.

If you could spend a single hour with an author from the past, whom would you choose and why?

Jane Austen, because I think she would be great company.

If you could travel in time, but in only one direction, which way would you go?

The future!  I’d like to see how things turn out.

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block?

I don’t think so, no.  Like most homo sapiens, I’m prone to bouts of idleness and procrastination, but I don’t think that’s quite the same thing.  And sometimes you need to let something well alone while your subconscious figures stuff out.  But, again, that’s a conscious decision on my part, made easier by a love of doing nothing.  I don’t think I’ve experienced a situation where I can’t write as opposed to won’t write.  I’m told it happens to everyone sooner or later, though, so no doubt my time will come.

Is there anything you wish you could do better?

Now that is a very long list!  Top of the list, though, would be sleep. For any number of reasons it’s one of the most important things you can do. Being idle by nature, I used to sleep like a champ.  Then I got my first court case, and I’ve never slept well since.  I think being a lawyer is like practising sorcery. You can change the world around you by the weighted use of carefully constructed phrases drawn from dusty old books.  Except instead of spells, we use statutes and regulations and precedent.  If that isn’t actual magic, I don’t know what is.  But, like any type of sorcery, there is a price to pay.  Some of us lose our souls.  In my case, I will never sleep again.

And finally, what’s next for you?

More books, I hope.  If the readers will have me.