John Duignan

John Duignan left school at 15 and worked in a blacksmith's workshop then served an engineering apprenticeship. He worked in the engineering and construction industries before going to university.

He has a BA First Class Honours (Economics and Economic History) from the University of Strathclyde; MPhil (Psychology) and PhD from the University of Glasgow.

Before becoming a full-time writer, John lectured in Economics, International Business, and Quantitative Methods at the University of the West of Scotland. He has been Associate Lecturer at Surrey European Management School, University of Surrey, and visiting lecturer at French Business Schools and universities, including Montpellier, Toulon, Annecy and Le Havre. He has presented academic papers at conferences in the UK, USA, Sweden and Australia.

John has had one stage play produced (co-written with Ian Hopkins), and has had work performed on TV and Radio. In his spare time he plays golf, swims, walks and is learning to draw. He plays the saxophone and piano - both at a level where he can only get better.

He lives in Barrhead, Scotland with wife Margaret and grandson Sean who is studying medicine. John's children are John-Paul, Claire and Stephen.

His first novel, Saving the Last Dance, is a fictionalised account of his time as an apprentice engineer then as a journeyman on the road. In this he uses the geography of his travels (London, North-East of England, Wales, Scotland), working on construction sites to introduce some memorable characters who inhabit a demi-monde, the existence of which, polite society prefers to deny. Around these places and characters, John weaves a tale of human folly and cynicism that is tempered by the redemptive powers of love from which hope springs.

Saving the Last Dance is the first book in the Gerry Sweeney/Katherine Black trilogy.

The second and third volumes - Katherine Black Doesn't Dance; and Things to do When the Music Stops - are also available on Kindle.

With his co-writer Ian Hopkins, John has written 'Skelp the Aged', published by Pegasus, 2016, a serious comedic novel. This is also available in a Kindle edition.

As well as writing novels, he has published Quantitative Methods for Business Research,(Cengage 2014) - a university-level text on statistical techniques that was developed from lectures he gave at the University of the West of Scotland; and is the author of A Dictionary of Business Research Methods, (Oxford University Press, 2016) on-line digital resource available world-wide through subscribing university and other libraries.