Peter Holdroyd

I live in a village a few miles from the city of Norwich, in the county of Norfolk, eastern England with my wife of more than 50 years. Our daughter lives just inside the city boundary of Norwich with our grand-daughters, whilst our son and his wife live and work in London.

It's more than 40 years since we moved to Norfolk. Before that, my wife and I lived in Suffolk, and I can't decide which I like best.

I started writing young. My parents bought me a portable typewriter when I was around 12, and I used to write a class magazine at school. Since then, I've written a lot of short stories. There's a selection, or anthology, here - 'Going Overboard' - which might reward your attention.

In 2003, I began studying Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia. I was encouraged to try to write a novel - to my mind, a massive undertaking, compared with the short stories I'd written up till then.

I've written around ten novels in the years since, and have now published the ninth (Appointment to Die) in printed form or as an eBook. As any writer will tell you, it is enormously difficult for unpublished writers to make that break-through with commercial publishers. As an 'unknown quantity', you have to jump through far more hoops than a published author does. In an industry reluctant to take a punt on something new, preferring the tried and tested, the challenge to write "the same, but different" is so daunting it's a wonder anybody new is signed up, ever. So I'm a convert to DIY publishing. Having seen the production quality of my paperback novel, I'm quite happy with that.

Along with Appointment to Die, I have revised and re-published Brain Fever. The former is set in my home county of Norfolk (a somewhat vampire-infested Norfolk!), whilst Brain Fever was (almost) submitted to an actual publisher in north Yorkshire, where the story is located. But at my age, frankly I don't want to go through all the angst again when it's so much easier to self-publish.

I hope you enjoy the stories.

Peter Holdroyd