Notes on writing, character, politics, and community.

For years I wrote quietly around teaching, family life, and ordinary responsibilities, never quite finding the right moment to publish.

I am publishing now because the stories feel ready, and because I want readers to feel welcome in the same rooms and conversations that changed me.

Before I write a chapter, I name the room where the scene will happen. The room is never decoration; it is pressure, permission, and memory at once.

A vestry, council chamber, kitchen, or corridor changes how people speak. Once the room is clear, character choices become clearer too.

When a scene becomes too clever, I run what I call the Margaret Test. If Margaret would not believe the line, the line goes.

She is not there to soften Alistair. She is there to insist on truth, proportion, and emotional accuracy.

Alistair works only if he remains fallible. He can be intelligent, but he cannot always be right.

I try to write him as a man learning in public, often late, and sometimes at personal cost.

My characters are fictional, but they are built from real voices, observed habits, and the odd contradictions we all carry.

I want readers to meet people on the page, not symbols, and to feel some affection even when a character is difficult.

I do not treat dialogue as decoration between events. In these novels, dialogue is the event.

A withheld answer, an interruption, or a question asked too late can change the direction of an entire chapter.

Political writing can become abstract very quickly. I avoid that by staying close to the person in the room.

Institutions matter, but they are experienced through families, colleagues, parish meetings, and difficult conversations.

I never begin a new book by asking what the next theme is. I ask what the last decision now costs.

That keeps continuity alive and prevents each novel from feeling like a reset in a new costume.

I have notebooks from decades of reading, travel, and observation. Most never appear directly on the page.

But no serious note is wasted. What is cut from one chapter often becomes the foundation of another.

Teaching English trained my ear before it trained my argument. In classrooms, tone is never abstract.

I learned to hear when language opens a door and when it closes one, and that lesson lives in every chapter I write.

I do not end chapters on noise. I end them when the emotional pressure has shifted and cannot be ignored.

A good chapter ending invites the next page because a character can no longer pretend nothing has changed.

I still draft many scenes by hand. The slower pace prevents me from pretending a weak sentence is acceptable.

Longhand helps me hear cadence and intention before the speed of typing pushes me into premature polish.

An argument tells readers what to think. A story lets readers witness what choices do to people.

I care deeply about ideas, but ideas only matter in fiction when they pass through character and consequence.

Secondary characters fail when they exist only to serve the protagonist's development.

I try to give every recurring character a private pressure the lead cannot fully see.

Most rewrites focus on meaning, but rhythm is often where a paragraph succeeds or fails.

If a sentence has the right information but the wrong pulse, readers feel distance instead of momentum.

Some of the best material for these books came from quiet evenings in community halls, not grand conferences.

People speak differently when they are not being performed to, and those tonal shifts taught me how to write more truthfully.

My best writing hours are early, before messages and errands divide attention.

I start with tea, read one page aloud, draft fresh material, and then revise one older passage.

With London Gin, I knew the street before I knew the whole plot. Cobblers Row arrived as a living community.

The story only worked once I treated the street as a character with memory, humor, and pride.

I wanted London Gin to be funny, but never at the expense of people who are already carrying enough.

Humor works best when the writer clearly likes the characters, even when they are being ridiculous.

Voice in London Gin came from rhythm more than slang; I cared most about timing, warmth, and edge.

I listened for how neighbors tease each other while still signaling loyalty under pressure.

Double Encryption begins in 1977 because the era was full of overlapping loyalties and brittle institutions.

I wanted readers to feel a world where ordinary people could be pulled into extraordinary risk very quickly.

Lisa is not written as a symbol of toughness; she is written as a person making costly choices under pressure.

Her strength is not certainty. It is her ability to think clearly while frightened.

In Double Encryption, secrecy is not just a plot engine. It is a strain placed on trust, friendship, and sleep.

I tried to show the quiet emotional cost of what characters cannot safely say aloud.

Some parts of Chateau Saint-Pierre came from first-hand stories people trusted me with over many years.

The novel is fiction, but its emotional truth is rooted in voices that were careful, personal, and difficult to forget.

Ulysses of Soho was an ambitious book that, in the end, did not work the way I hoped.

It taught me that a failed draft can still be useful if you listen to what it is trying to tell you.