Pauline Rowson on how she became an author

I wrote my first novel at the age of eleven, an adventure story in the style of Enid Blyton, who was my great inspiration. It was borrowing an Enid Blyton book from my lovely little local library in Portsmouth that ignited my love of reading and of writing.  From about the age of seven or eight I too wanted to be a writer. I was always writing stories and plays, the latter of which I’d stage with my friends and brothers in the garage at our family home.

It took me some years to become an 'author' although I ended up writing for a career in marketing and PR before I was published.  

When you embark on a writing career it is not always obvious what you want to write. And it was the same for me. Some people begin with short stories, others throw themselves into a novel. But just as in painting when it takes the artist time to find his or her style so too is it the same for the writer.  This often happens by trial, error and experimentation.

When I first started writing  with the aim of becoming a published author I began by writing historical sagas. They were all rejected but they helped me to learn my craft and hone my style. Over time I found that a criminal element kept creeping into these sagas and I also discovered that I preferred to write from the male point of view. It was a while before it dawned on me that I should be writing crime novels with a male protagonist. It should have been pretty obvious because ever since Enid Blyton I have devoured crime and thriller novels for years and am a great crime fiction fan. But the time spent writing historical sagas wasn't wasted. I learnt a lot along the way. And my new crime novel to be published this year in September 2019 is indeed an historical crime novel set in 1950 and featuring a Scotland Yard detective, Inspector Alun Ryga who is set down to the Dorset coast to investigate an unusual murder.

The key to finding what you want to write about is simple - write and experiment, but most of all enjoy it.

DEAD PASSAGE is the latest in the DI Andy Horton series, number fourteen. It is available in paperback, as an ebook and on Amazon Kindle.

A mysterious telephone call sends Horton on a complex and twisted investigation into the death of a local politician twelve years ago and uncovers a trail of lies, secrets and revenge with roots deep in the past.