Mark Edwards's Blog, page 12

Why You Must Be Crazy to Want to be a Writer

Mark writes: Don’t put your daughter on the stage, Mrs Worthington. And don’t encourage her to spend her days hunched over a keyboard either, Noel Coward should have added.

Being a writer is a vocation for lunatics, the kind of thing you only do if you are a masochistic fool, the kind of person who loves nothing more than being repeatedly and consistently rejected, knocked, disappointed and laughed at, with only the occasional glimmer of hope, let alone happiness, to sweeten the bitter pill you swallow every day. It’s a little like being a fervent England supporter – except much, much worse. At least England fans have other people to share their unhappiness and delusions with.

Here, on the eve of the publication of my second solo novel, What You Wish For, which is my sixth published novel in total, are five reasons why you have to be nuts to be a novelist – but why I, like so many others, just can’t help myself.

The Loneliest Profession

There you sit at your keyboard, all alone, like Tom Hanks in Castaway. Except you don’t even have a friendly volleyball called Wilson sitting on your desk looking cute. All you have are a bunch of characters that you made up, your own Wilsons, characters who you probably feel, being mad, have taken on a life of their own. If you’re one of the lucky few you have an agent and/or a publisher, the boss you rarely see, and although you don’t have any real colleagues, or work friends, you kid yourself that exchanging tweets with other writers counts as water-cooler conversation.

And as you drag words out of your head, one eye on the word count at the bottom of the screen, you are dimly aware that across the country there are people having real conversations, laughing, doing jobs that actually matter. You start to talk to the cat. You start to tweet pictures of the cat. You stare at the words and have no idea if they are the fruits of your genius or the rotten eggs of your uselessness. Every so often you will ask your significant other, or your agent/publisher, or, God help you, a beta reader, to look over your latest pages. You try not to look too desperate when you ask them if they’ve had a chance to read it yet. You remember the first time an English teacher gave you an A+ for a story that you wrote at primary school, the first time you experienced the sweet hit of the addiction that would go on to rule your life.

Every so often, the words will flow, the scenes and chapters leaping from your imagination, brilliant ideas sparking and fizzing and setting your work in progress alight. This is it! The world-conquering No.1 bestseller! You leap up from your little desk, ignoring the pain in your back, and punch the air with joy. The cat blinks at you then walks from the room, curling up in a patch of sunlight, happy and content, mocking you with its purrs as it shows you what life could be like if you weren’t a writer.

Nobody Cares

Nobody gives a damn about you and your novel. Let’s face it, the world needs another writer like it needs to be struck by a comet, kick-starting the next ice age. The world needs new writers like it needs new boy bands. Come the apocalypse, when carpenters and hunters and Bear Grylls are at the top of the food chain, useful and necessary, you will be at the very bottom, just below tax advisors. Even if you cleverly predicted this very apocalyptic scenario in a YA dystopian trilogy that you wrote!

Unpublished? It doesn’t matter if you are the most incisive, clever writer in the world (which you almost certainly are not), mapping the human condition like a cartographer of the soul – tell people that you are working on a novel and they will look at you like you just told them your dog has cancer. Their eyes will glaze over as you attempt to answer the dreaded question, ‘What’s it about?’

You will sweat blood polishing and buffing your synopsis and first three chapters, carefully select a handful of agents from the Writers Handbook and send it to them. Then you will wait. And wait. You are vaguely aware that they receive quite a lot of other submissions. You might not be aware that they each receive approximately a billion submissions just like yours every single day – even Christmas day – and they will glance at yours with a bored sneer before sending you a standard rejection slip.

This doesn’t matter, of course, these days, because you can self publish, just like millions of other geniuses. Then you can tell all your friends that you have a book on Amazon, which is like telling them that both your dog and cat have cancer, and unless you are (ahem) incredibly lucky, you will hit refresh on your sales figures every five minutes and finally have statistical proof that nobody – nobody! – cares.

Everyone’s a Critic

Once you finally get a book out there in the world – whether you were snapped up by a traditional publisher or have gone the self-pub route – you sit and wait for the reviews to start rolling in. 0.05% of books get reviewed in newspapers and magazines. The rest get reviewed on Amazon. By people. Real people. Some of whom are literally members of the great unwashed. These people have no respect for all the effort that went into your life’s work. They weren’t there the day you lay on the floor weeping and hugging the cat a little too hard. They don’t know that your mum and your former English teacher think you are ‘quite good’. The first review rolls in:

How did this get published?

This was possibly the worst book I’ve ever read. I guessed that Professor Black did it on page three. Also, doesn’t the author know that electric irons weren’t invented until 1923, not 1922 like it says in this novel. If I could give it less than 1 star I would.

You mark it unhelpful then go and give the cat another really hard squeeze.

Every other writer in the world is luckier than you



‘Wow! Just had some v exciting news,’ tweets one of your writer peers. ‘Can’t wait to share!’

‘What is it?’ you seethe. A new book deal? Six figures? Seven figures? Oh God, please not a film deal. The rights have probably been snapped up by Spielberg. Nicole Kidman is going to star in it. The jammy, flukey, undeserving bastard. Their agent is obviously so much better than yours. What have you done to deserve this?

The next day they reveal the big news. They’ve sold the rights to their novel in Malta. A three figure deal. You still seethe. What do they have that makes their book so much more appealing to the Maltese than yours? You need a new agent.

The next day you find seven books by people you met at that literary festival in WHSmith, on the bestseller list. Yours isn’t even in the remainder bin. You smile and wish them luck. They deserve the success. The jammy, flukey bastards…

The dream is, like, a total nightmare



You’ve done it. You got the deal you always dreamed of. Your agent has phoned with the good news. You are elated, the happiest man or woman on earth. Your mum is so proud. The cat is probably proud too. This is it. You’ve made it. You are a proper writer now. The world is your oyster, and your oyster contains the biggest, most flawless, perfect pearl ever discovered. You tweet your good news and wonder how many other writers are glaring enviously at their screens right now.

Then your publisher shows you the post-it note containing the marketing plan. They tell you they’re going to tweet about it ‘quite a lot’. They’ve managed to bribe several shops to stock it. They are going to build your career from the ground up, one reader at a time.

The novel comes out. It’s No.78 in the WHSmith bestseller list for two weeks. It reaches no 4,718 on the Amazon rankings. Then it disappears. Forever. The cat laughs at you.

But…

It’s all worth it! It’s like having kids. They trash the house, they smear chocolate on your new sofa, they never say thank you or appreciate how you’ve given up your entire life for them. But you still love them. And you love being a writer. Because, because…

The writing. The joy of inventing worlds, of feeling the power and excitement when everything flows. The pleasure of spending time with the characters you created. The sweetness of crafting the perfect sentence.

Getting an email from a reader who loved your book, who thanks you for writing it. They can’t wait for your next novel, they are going to recommend you to all their friends. You have inspired them, made them laugh or cry. They are going to leave you a five star review on Amazon.

Meeting other writers. Discovering that you are part of a community of people like you, friendly, generous people who have hang-ups and doubts just like yours. Who are genuinely pleased for you when you do well, just as you are for them.

The ecstasy of watching your book climb the charts, achieving sales you never dreamed of.

Not having to spend your days having water cooler conversations in a smelly office full of people who don’t like books.

The sheer pleasure of holding your novel, of seeing it in a shop, or on a website. You did that. You achieved it. No one can take that away from you. Ever.

And you get to hang out with the cat. Every day. And the cat doesn’t care if you’re crazy. Because it’s a writer’s cat. And that, in the feline world, is the very coolest thing to be.

What You Wish For is available on Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com. It’s a novel about pursuing your beliefs even when everyone in the world thinks you are mad. A novel about not giving up. It’s a novel about a young man whose girlfriend disappears and his desperate quest to find her. And nobody, yet, has written ‘If I could give it less than one star I would’.

From the Cradle Cover Revealed

We are excited to reveal the cover of our next novel together, From the Cradle, which will be published worldwide on October 7th by Thomas & Mercer, part of Amazon Publishing. Click on the image to your left to see it larger.

From the Cradle is about children who have gone missing, and we wanted the cover to get that concept across at a glance. We all have images of the parents of abducted children clinging to their left-behind toys. My (Mark’s) own daughter had for the first few years of her life a small pink rabbit, imaginatively named Pink Bunny, that she was inseparable from. (I lost it twice, but that’s another story.) My son has a blue teddy that he won’t sleep without. So when our editor at Amazon sent over the initial designs for the cover, my first thought was that it was too sad, too distressing. I’m the kind of person who cries at Toy Story 3 because I can’t bear the thought of loyal toys being abandoned.

The bunny on this cover is even sadder, because he (I can’t help but think of the rabbit as male) hasn’t been left behind by a forgetful child; that child has been taken, the much-loved comforter tossed aside… So yes, it’s sad, but it’s an image that should squeeze a parent’s heart, make them experience that butterfly-flap of anxiety in their gut. This cover tells you to fear the worst, and that’s exactly why we like it.

From the Cradle is the first in what we hope will grow into a new series – our first police procedural, but with strong elements of psychological thriller – featuring Detective Inspector Patrick Lennon, who works for one of the Metropolitan Police’s MITs (Murder Investigations Team) in south-west London.

Here’s the blurb to From the Cradle:

The first child was taken from her house.

The second from his mother’s car.

The third from her own bedroom…

When Helen and Sean Phillips go out for the evening, leaving their teenage daughter babysitting little Frankie, they have no idea that they are about to face every parent’s greatest fear.

Detective Inspector Patrick Lennon is hopeful that the three children who have been abducted in this patch of south-west London will be returned safe and well. But when a body is found in a local park, Lennon realizes that time is running out – and that nothing in this case is as it seems…

Blending police procedural and psychological thriller, FROM THE CRADLE will have every parent checking that their children are safe in their beds…then checking again.

From the Cradle is published on October 7th and is available to pre-order now.

Guardian Angel: Download Your Free Short Story Now.

Download a new 7500-word short story by Mark Edwards now.

Guardian Angel

Laura is addicted to the Missed Connections column in her local newspaper. One morning she is stunned to spot an ad that is seemingly aimed at her:

Slim redhead, WH Smith Travel, Waterloo, Tues 6.30pm. Black coat, red scarf. You bought Grazia, Diet Coke. Dropped your change, it rolled under paper stand. Contact me please?

She decides she can’t be the slim redhead, until another ad appears a few days later, telling her exactly what she was doing at the weekend. Is it a prank – or is Laura really being watched..?

To download Guardian Angel, simply enter your email address and name below. By doing this, you will be sent occasional emails from Voss and Edwards containing news, competitions and special offers. Your email address will never be passed on and you can unsubscribe at any time.

If you are already on the email list, this story will be emailed to you automatically so you don’t need to do anything.

Email Address


First Name


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You will be sent an email asking you to confirm your membership of the email list. Once you do this you will immediately receive another email containing links to the story in Word and PDF format.

What You Wish For by Mark Edwards – Out Now

The second solo novel by Mark Edwards was published on March 25th. Available exclusively on Amazon, the Kindle version is available first, and will be followed later by a paperback.

If you don’t have a Kindle, you can download the Kindle app for your iPad, iPhone, PC, Mac and various other devices.

To keep up to date as more details are revealed, and for an invite to the Facebook launch party, simply like the Facebook Voss & Edwards page.

The cover features the photographer, Sarah Ann Loreth, who also appeared on the covers of The Magpies, Catch Your Death and Kissing Games. However, Sarah didn’t take the photo this time. It was shot by her student, Isabella Tan. The cover was designed by Jennifer Vince. To see the full-size cover, click on the image to the left.

Here’s the blurb:

When newspaper photographer Richard meets college student Marie, he is smitten – even though he can’t share her belief in UFOs and aliens. Marie is beautiful, mysterious and passionate. And with his own career finally taking off, everything seems perfect.

Until Marie vanishes.

Richard vows to find her – but a shocking discovery makes him question if he ever really knew his girlfriend. And when people around him start to die, Richard is plunged into terrible danger, but refuses to give up on his obsessive quest.

Drawn into the strange world of alien abduction cults and the darkest corners of the Internet, Richard finds himself increasingly out of his depth – as he discovers just how far people will go to protect what they believe in…

Find it on Amazon.co.uk now.

What You Wish For by Mark Edwards – Coming March 20th

The second solo novel by Mark Edwards will be published on March 20th. Available exclusively on Amazon, the Kindle version will be available first, followed later by a paperback.

If you don’t have a Kindle, you can download the Kindle app for your iPad, iPhone, PC, Mac and various other devices.

To keep up to date as more details are revealed, and for an invite to the Facebook launch party, simply like the Facebook Voss & Edwards page.

The cover features the photographer, Sarah Ann Loreth, who also appeared on the covers of The Magpies, Catch Your Death and Kissing Games. However, Sarah didn’t take the photo this time. It was shot by her student, Isabella Tan. The cover was designed by Jennifer Vince. To see the full-size cover, click on the image to the left.

Here’s the blurb:

When newspaper photographer Richard meets college student Marie, he is smitten – even though he can’t share her belief in UFOs and aliens. Marie is beautiful, mysterious and passionate. And with his own career finally taking off, everything seems perfect.

Until Marie vanishes.

Richard vows to find her – but a shocking discovery makes him question if he ever really knew his girlfriend. And when people around him start to die, Richard is plunged into terrible danger, but refuses to give up on his obsessive quest.

Drawn into the strange world of alien abduction cults and the darkest corners of the Internet, Richard finds himself increasingly out of his depth – as he discovers just how far people will go to protect what they believe in…

Exciting Next Steps for Voss and Edwards

We are delighted to announce that our fifth novel, FROM THE CRADLE, will be published by Thomas & Mercer, part of Amazon Publishing, in the UK and US this autumn.

This is an exciting next step for us, with a new publisher and a new series, featuring DI Patrick Lennon. The book is scheduled for release autumn 2014, with the exact date to follow. It will be exclusive to Amazon and will be available as a Kindle book, paperback and audiobook.

Everyone who has read it is confident that FROM THE CRADLE is our best book yet and we can’t wait for our loyal and growing band of readers to get their hands on it. Here’s the blurb:

When three children are snatched from beneath the noses of their parents in south-west London, DI Patrick Lennon knows he is facing the most difficult challenge of his career. A year ago, Lennon was forced to arrest his own wife after she tried to murder their baby. Now, struggling with childcare and the emotional fallout, Lennon is under intense pressure to find the abductor. And then the body of one of the children is found in a local park…

As dead end follows dead end, Lennon is increasingly haunted by the case – until his hospitalised wife sets him on the right path – a path that leads to the unearthing of a dark family secret and the biggest dilemma of his life.

Blending police procedural and psychological thriller, FROM THE CRADLE introduces DI Patrick Lennon – sensitive, tough, methodical – as he faces every parent’s greatest fear.

Back in 2011, when we self-published CATCH YOUR DEATH and KILLING CUPID, we were thrilled when they reached the top of the Kindle chart in the UK. This led to a four-book  deal with HarperCollins and the subsequent publication of ALL FALL DOWN and FORWARD SLASH. Unfortunately, the success of our first books wasn’t repeated – until Mark self-published THE MAGPIES in 2013. This topped the Kindle chart and has so far sold 180,000 copies. Our combined ebook sales in the UK are just over 300,000.

With THE MAGPIES now published by Thomas & Mercer, and Mark’s hugely positive experience working with the Amazon Publishing team, we didn’t hesitate to accept a deal with Thomas & Mercer for FROM THE CRADLE.

As well as this novel, there will be three more solo books from Mark and Louise published in 2014:

Mark’s WHAT YOU WISH FOR will be published in March.

Louise’s THE VENUS TRAP is coming this spring.

Mark’s BECAUSE SHE LOVES ME will be published by Thomas & Mercer this autumn, before FROM THE CRADLE.

Mark will also be publishing a new short story through Amazon Publishing this year.

More details about all of these books will follow soon.

We are firm believers in the growing power that authors now have thanks to self-publishing and the options that authors have to mix self- and traditional-publishing. For us, the most important thing is to connect with readers and keep writing books they enjoy. We are very excited by this next step in our careers, both together and solo, and can’t wait to see what happens next.

You can find us on Facebook where we chat with readers and regularly host giveaways and share news.

How Self-Publishing The Magpies Saved My Life

Mark writes: It’s been quite a year. At the end of 2012 I wrote a post about our first year as published authors and, looking at it now, we gave quite a rose-tinted view of what it had really been like. I’m writing this post now in an attempt to illustrate how, when you’re a writer, you never know what’s going to happen. While the quality of your books is down to you, success and failure – in terms of having a career – often feel like they are out of your hands. But now, in 2013, writers have a lot more options, more ways of finding readers and selling books, than ever before. To illustrate this, here’s what happened this year – and how taking action rescued me not only from giving up on my dream but got me out of a horribly sticky situation.

Back in February, Louise and I had a meeting with our agent in London. Our third novel, All Fall Down, had just come out and failed to set the world alight. Our publisher hadn’t been able to get it into any shops, apart from a few local branches of Waterstones. They had already warned us that a similar fate awaited our just-completed novel Forward Slash. It was gutting. We were so proud of Forward Slash, were sure it was our best book, and had been told that it wasn’t even going to be in any shops. With our contract with our publisher at an end, we had no choice but to write our next novel on spec.

This was disappointing, but a fact of life for many writers. There’s no point moaning about it. As a writer, the world doesn’t owe you a living. Yes, our publisher had given up on us after our first two books didn’t sell as many as they hoped. That’s the harsh commercial reality of publishing and there’s nothing you can do about it.

The big problem for me was not that my dreams of being a successful writer had taken a hard knock, but that I was in serious financial trouble. I had gambled by giving up my day job after getting the publishing deal, though still supporting myself and my family by doing freelance work. I was working by day and writing at night, just as I’d always done. But the books weren’t bringing in any money and I no longer had the security of my day job. My overdraft was at its limit, my credit card was maxed out, I had horrible debts and commitments. As well as having two young children, my partner was pregnant.

We were in deep shit. I could hardly sleep at night for worrying about all of it. How was I going to pay the mortgage? What the hell was I going to do?

Before starting to write with Louise, I had written a few books that almost got published. One of these was called The Magpies, a novel about neighbours from hell. Of all my solo novels, this was definitely the best, but my failure to find a publisher for it meant it had spent a long time gathering dust in a drawer. I only had a digital copy of it because I had once emailed it to my girlfriend and, luckily, she hadn’t deleted the email. For the last couple of years I had been intending to rewrite it, getting it out every now and then to tinker with it. But with all my other commitments, I didn’t get very far.

As Louise and I left the meeting with our agent, I told her about my financial plight and said, ‘I’m going to self-publish The Magpies now. I’m not going to mess around with it any more.’ Louise offered to read and edit it for me. My partner offered to do the same. So on the train home, I got my laptop out and started work on it.

Two years before, Louise and I had hit No.1 and 2 on Amazon with our first two self-published books. Yes, we had done it before, but the landscape was different now. There was far more competition, not just from other self-publishers but traditional publishers who were filling the charts with books that cost 20p. My only advantage compared to two years ago was that I had experience now and a small but loyal band of regular readers on the Voss & Edwards Facebook page, as well as on Twitter. I also knew quite a few bloggers and reviewers. After the book was edited, I was able to get a fantastic cover image from a photographer I’d befriended and my very kind sister-in-law offered to design the cover, just as she’d done two years ago.

I figured that if I could sell 20,000 copies at £1.99 I could pay off my debts and keep my head above water – just.

Then I had a stroke of luck. I noticed that Rachel Abbott, a writer I am friendly with, was about to self-publish her new one. I emailed her and she told me she was doing it through her agent, using Amazon’s new White Glove programme. This is where Amazon offer some promo in exchange for a period of exclusivity. My agent was keen to try this, so he set it all up with Amazon and at the end of March, the book went live. I held a launch party on Facebook which a few dozen ‘fans’ attended and, on day one, sold 133 copies. Not bad, though it had taken a lot of effort to achieve that. Now I had to hope it started to climb the chart…

Over the next few days, sales dropped off.  109 on day 2. Just 46 on day 3. 74 the next day. Don’t worry, I’m not going to give you a day-by-day account of sales! But I woke up on Good Friday and checked my ranking while still in bed (yes, I’m sad). It had dropped substantially overnight. I sighed heavily. This wasn’t going to work. I wasn’t going to be able to sell 2000 copies, let alone 20,000. I needed a plan B. That episode of Blackadder where he and Baldrick visit the docks to do favours for sailors sprang to mind…

Then something happened. I checked my sales figures an hour later and noticed I’d sold about 20 copies in the last hour. I hit refresh. Another half a dozen sales. Hit refresh again. More sales. I caught my breath. It was taking off. This was exactly what had happened with Catch Your Death two years before. I knew it must be because Amazon had sent out an email to people who had previously purchased my books.

That day I sold 858 copies and the book was No. 35 overall on Amazon. The next day it sold even more and went up to No. 25. It got stuck after that and began to slowly drop, until I dropped the price to 99p and watched it climb – into the top twenty, then the top ten.

A few weeks later, it hit No.1.

Over those few months, I sold 170,000 copies. Way beyond my initial target. Reviews flooded in, most of them positive. It was astonishing. This novel, which might easily have remained in my bottom drawer forever, had struck a chord with people. Gratifyingly, mine and Louise’s books also started to climb the chart, purchased by this new readership. At one point I had five books in the psychological thrillers top ten.

Then Amazon Publishing made me an offer I couldn’t refuse…

As I write, The Magpies is back in the Kindle top 100 and starting to sell in the US too. It’s also been No.1 in Australia. I have not only been able to pay off my debts, but am writing pretty much full-time now. Living the dream, at least temporarily. I know it could all go wrong again, if the next books don’t sell. There are no guarantees. This ‘job’ has no security. But for now, I am writing. I am not tossing and turning at night worrying how I’m going to feed my kids.

And this is all because of the new world of publishing we live in. Today, writers have options – more than ever before. Yes, it’s great having a publisher, and working with Amazon Publishing is a joy, but for me, being a ‘hybrid’ author is the best way, if you’re not an established bestseller, of taking control of your career…of having a career at all.

I can’t quite believe my luck – how I managed to dig myself out of such a huge hole. I am enormously grateful to the people who helped: to my ever-patient partner, to Louise, to my agent, my designer and photographer, my loyal readers and Facebook friends, the bloggers and reviewers who read the book and helped promote it, the other writers who have supported me. And yes, to Amazon. Because without them, none of this would have happened.

It’s been a great year. Genuinely, this time. Who knows what 2014 will bring? But one thing is for sure. I am going to keep doing the thing I love.

The Magpies is available now from Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com.

Forward Slash is Out Now

Forward Slash, the fourth Voss & Edwards novel, is out now as an ebook, with the paperback to follow on July 18th. Designed to scare the pants off anyone who has ever tried internet dating, along with users of Facebook, Twitter and other social networks, Forward Slash is a serial killer thriller that is already picking up great reviews. You can order it from Amazon now or ask your local bookshop to order you a copy.

Here’s the blurb:

He’s posted on your wall.

He’s following you on Twitter.

He knows where you are right now…

When Amy receives an email from her older sister, Becky, announcing that she’s off travelling and “don’t try to find me”, she is worried. Becky would never do such a thing on a whim.

Amy – who is recovering from an abusive relationship that has left her terrified of love – soon finds that Becky had started using online dating sites. Aided by Becky’s neighbour, Gary, Amy sets about tracking down the men her sister had dated, following a trail that leads her into the darkly seductive world of internet hook-ups.

But Amy is unaware that a sadistic killer is watching – a killer who’s been using the internet to stalk, torture and kill. Now he’s got something very special planned for Amy and she is about to find out that romance really is dead.

Buy the ebook now from Amazon.co.uk


Also available for iPad, Kobo or Nook.

Mini Tour of Shropshire

In or near Shropshire? These are the only events we are doing for the foreseeable future so if you can make it, please come along!

June 5th – Shrewsbury Library, 7.30pm (Mark solo)

Tickets £3 – Book on 01743 255308

June 6th – Bridgnorth Library, 7.30pm (Mark and Louise)

Tickets £3 – Book on 01746 763358

Light refreshments are included!

This is your chance to meet us, get your books signed and ask us questions.

How Real-Life Nightmare Neighbours Inspired The Magpies

The Magpies, Mark’s first solo novel, is released on Amazon Monday March 25th. In The Magpies, a young couple called Jamie and Kirsty move into their dream home together. The other people in the building seem nice – but then everything starts to go horribly, terrifyingly wrong…

Mark writes: The Magpies is not purely a work of the imagination. Back in the 1990s, I left university and moved into a flat in St Leonards-on-Sea, in East Sussex, with my then-girlfriend. As in the book, it was a ground floor flat in a large Victorian house, with high ceilings, large sash windows that rattled in the wind and bright, sunny rooms. This flat was where I wrote my early novels, spending a lot of my twenties locked away indoors pursuing my dream of being a published writer.

There was a middle-aged woman on the top floor – we didn’t see much of her – and a young guy above us who, at times, seemed to have a motorbike and a drum kit in his flat. But you expect noise when you live in a flat.

Beneath us, in the basement – or garden – flat were a married couple in their early thirties. I won’t use their real names, just in case they see this and track me down, but they are burned into my memory more than any other neighbours I’ve had.

She was an acquaintance of my girlfriend’s mum, and had a face, as Les Dawson would have said, like a bulldog chewing a wasp. I am pretty sure I never saw a smile crack her face. She worked as a nurse in a care home for the elderly, a detail I borrowed for Lucy in the novel.

He was a great soft-bellied hulk, with what used to be called a crew cut and eyes like a great white shark’s. He was a man of few words and had an air of simmering violence about him. He didn’t smile much either. He mostly lumbered around the garden, watering it at night during the hosepipe ban.

My girlfriend lived in the flat on her own for a while I was at university. On her first night in the flat she was playing music on a tiny cassette player while unpacking. No, she wasn’t playing it loudly. Shortly after she pressed play, the man from downstairs knocked on her door and asked, while staring at her chest, for her to turn the music down as his wife had a headache. Feeling intimidated by this huge man and not wanting to annoy her new neighbours, she obliged.

After I moved in, the trouble really started. Mostly, it was constant complaints about noise. They used to send us letters in which they described the noises that came from our flat. One memorable letter complained about the noise of ‘the toilet brush thrashing about the pan’. They wrote that they could hear me laughing (‘my boring guffaw’, they wrote). They made it very clear that they could hear everything we did – and I mean everything. I feel like I should point out that we were definitely not excessively noisy.

Then we started receiving hoax parcels. In those days, book clubs were popular, and we received a parcel of books from BCA, the biggest, containing such classics as Nancy Friday’s Women in Love, a pre-50 Shades of Grey work of true life erotica. We got BCA to send us the order form. The handwriting matched the writing on the complaint letters.

Cigarette butts were often shoved under our door. They constantly banged on the ceiling with a broom. Every time we put music on, they would start playing music much louder so we could hear it over ours. They were always lurking around, looking miserable and intimidating. Although they never threatened us, they made us feel on edge all the time, and we were blissfully relieved when we moved out after buying our own place.

Later, I started to imagine how far the harassment could have gone. Could your neighbours wreck your life if they set their minds to it? The seed of The Magpies was sewn. I wanted to write a scary novel that didn’t contain vampires or demons, but real monsters – the monsters who lurk in our society, causing stress and damage, and worse, to everyone around them.

And I tried to imagine what I would have done if my own nightmare neighbour situation had got a lot worse. How would I have fought back? Would I have fought, or run? I wanted to write a book about someone who is driven to the edge of despair, to act out of character, because of growing provocation. Many of the situations in the novel happened in my real life, but they are taken to an extreme in The Magpies.

I think everybody has had either a nightmare neighbour, or colleague, or some other acquaintance; the kind of person who you wish would cease to exist. Crammed together in cities and towns, in flats and small houses, we are forced to deal with other people. They say that ‘hell is other people’. In The Magpies, I have taken that saying to its extreme.

I hope readers enjoy it far more than I enjoyed living upstairs from the couple from hell.

Get The Magpies on Amazon.co.uk for £1.99 (Kindle edition)

Get The Magpies on Amazon.com for $2.99 (Kindle edition)

Watch the trailer

The Magpies 20-Second Trailer