The common theme throughout both ‘MR. TAP‘ books is his love affair with his wine. Living in one of nine apartments in a converted château near Carcassonne in the south of France, he thinks nothing of spending thousands of €€€s on just one rarity, but he’s also obsessive about his stash of cheap supermarket plonk that he’s wrongly convinced his neighbours in the château are trying to steal. When local vintner Adrian Braddan locates a much sought-after vintage, Mr. Tap knows he simply has to have it, despite its enormous price tag. With several days to wait until Braddan is due to deliver his special wine, Mr. Tap becomes increasingly irritated by any slight activity or noise by his neighbours that might spoil his big tasting day.

In ‘BOOK ONE – BEFORE LIFE’ the wily cantankerous old fool is always having some discrepancy or other with his neighbours.

One by one they fall victim to his ignorance, negligence, incompetence and temper, causing their unimaginable fates of bad fortune.

With Police Inspector Marceau de Mantis hot on his heels, Mr. Tap stealthily makes his escape from the château with his loyal but ever-sleepy dog Rolo reluctantly in tow…

In ‘BOOK TWO – AFTER LIFE’ we see that Mr. Tap doesn’t get too far before disaster strikes and he has to come to terms with his new ghostly existence bound by the confines of the château. As soon as Mr. Tap’s Last Will and Testament is read, a whole new chain of events is set in motion…

This story of ‘MR. TAP‘ comes complete with deadly caterpillars, heavy-metal music loving goats, a crazed Rhodesian Ridgeback and Nellie, a dwarf twin elephant with a healthy appetite for croissants. And that’s just the tip of the lettuce. There’s also my old Mini Moke, making its debut on the cover of a novel – a world’s first, if I’m not mistaken.

Did I mention it’s all a right farce too? A French farce of a ghost story. Has there ever been one of those written before? There’s always a first.

À Votre Santé!

We used to own one of the apartments in an imposing château near Carcassonne in the beautiful south of France, just like the fictional Mr. Tap did.

Having several apartment owners of different nationalities sharing the building’s upkeep costs often didn’t bode well for entente cordiale relations between us, not to mention Mr Tap’s bloody campervan always being parked right outside the communal front door, there were many opportunities for disagreements to flourish.

A thrilling rollercoaster ride of love, lust and an uncovered truth.

When Oliver Markland buys an old prison key from a Florida flea market his casual purchase sets off a train of events surrounding a brutal, decades-old murder. Feeling empathy for the young cyclist who may have been wrongly incarcerated for the notorious crime, Oliver finds himself drawn into unravelling a mystery that threatens his own life.

Who really did commit the so-called ‘Bike Radio Murder’? Can the budding Essex journalist, dubbed by the American press ‘The British Young Sherlock’, solve a puzzle left dormant since dental assistant Sandy Beach was beaten to death in 1981?

Only Oliver Markland has the key…

Holidaying in Florida, at a flea market I rummaged through a box of old keys and found one of interest. The vendor informed me that it might have come from a prison in Illinois. Fascinated, I bought it for $17 and did some research, only to discover that it in fact did come from Joliet Penitentiary (the same prison used in the opening sequences of the classic Blues Brothers film).

That got me thinking about who might have been incarcerated there, and why. Perhaps the prisoner had been found guilty of a murder he or she always claimed to be innocent of. But all prisoners claim their innocence, don’t they?

I cast my mind back to the early 80’s when I cycled across the USA and met a Japanese national, Yushi, cycling in the opposite direction on ‘a deep desert highway’. I imagined him being that accused young man…

Florida Key was published by Hornet Books in 2018, and once again David Roberts designed the cover, with us setting up a bicycle in my living room.

Leslie Markland hasn’t a clue what the word ‘entailment’ means, but when his father’s will is read he soon finds out – and it’s not good news.
Cruelly denied his inheritance – the Markland Estate in Yorkshire – Leslie sets out to gain revenge on the father who betrayed him. Living on a barge on the river estuary at Wivenhoe in Essex, he plots his retribution.
The unforeseen train of events this unleashes backfires spectacularly when he winds up in prison.
With unpredictable twists and turns, this book is the extraordinary tale of revenge and unexpected love he writes during his stay at Her Majesty’s pleasure.

“If I could dig up his bones from the grave and chuck them in the river, I would!” a man told me, talking about his late father. I was shocked, and wanted to know more. He went on to explain how he’d been left out from his father’s will because of not having any children of his own, in favour of his younger brother who did. His solution was to scupper that will and contest it once he’d fathered a child of his own, using a sperm-donation surrogacy agency. I was fascinated. “This could make a great story,” I remarked, half joking. “Well, fill yer boots then. Go ahead,” he complied. “Just leave my name out of it.”

Starting with main character (and made-up name) Leslie Markland, he enters the London agency to begin his own personal baby-making process…

On my old boat (dubbed ‘A Boat for my Potplants’) moored conveniently outside a pub on the muddy waters of Wivenhoe, I continued writing up Leslie’s story, imagining how his quest for retribution might continue, and I discussed the story’s progress with fellow Wivenhonian David Roberts from Hornet Books during our weekly meet-up there. He mentored me, making welcome suggestions about the characters and plot – but demanding that he could design the cover if Hornet were to publish Muddy Water.

Of course I agreed, and we actually used my daughter Laura for the two slightly different photos (look at her hands on the final cover), taken in my living room under David’s artistic direction.

Laura, a brilliant artist, also illustrated all the main characters – including Harry the dog.

MUDDY WATER, (published 2015), was the first of my books to incorporate my ‘CASH FOR CHARACTERS’ scheme, where a number of real people paid to become characters in the story, and at the launch party I divvied up all the cash (£1,600) raised between the RNLI, MIND, The Samaritans, and the Royal British Legion.

And to cap it all, my old friend Joanna Eden (who I used to ‘manage’, and who was the singing teacher for Sam Smith), especially wrote and performed her song ‘Muddy Water’ at the book launch. 

I very much wanted to continue my book-writing career, following MUDDY WATER. But the question was how could I balance my financial books? Then I hit upon the genius idea… CASH FOR CHARACTERS!

Just as in MUDDY WATER, I offered folks the opportunity to have themselves written into FLORIDA KEY, my second book, for a princely sum. Cliff from Australia was so shocked at what he’d read in Muddy Water that he couldn’t wait to be in one of my books!

Well, he had to wait until I wrote MR. TAP when he eventually became ‘The Evil Aussie’.

I was rather doubtful that anyone would be keen to hand over cash for their character – but I was inundated with requests similar to Cliff’s – and who was I to turn them down?

It became a fun-challenge to weave them into the plot. But with a little cash incentive, I’d do anything to fit ’em in somehow. For example, (l to r) there was Graham Staples the Police Sergeant, Police Chief John Moores (Graham’s boss), murder victim Sandy Beach, traffic cop Phil Booth, bad man Mark Osborn, and Police Officer William Wheatley.

As well as the practical benefits of having a few pennies thrown my way to help finance the writing, I discovered that it actually enhanced the writing process.

That led me to MR. TAP. Everyone and their dog wanted to be in it, including Rolo, who I gave a central role to as Mr. Tap’s old faithful. 

For years I was a sales rep, driving up and down the country selling TV’s, video recorders, and car radios to retailers – and I was even quite good at it.

But then my employers informed me that they would be closing their UK operation, and that if I wished I could take immediate redundancy, or alternatively work with them for the next 6 months until the company’s closure, and take a package then.

Having nothing better to do, I decided I’d remain until the bitter end. Feeling a tad low one day and worrying about my future, I went to buy a Sales reps’ magazine– only to discover there was nothing to be found on the shelves.

There was an obvious gap in a potentially huge market. I had a light-bulb moment – I would create such a magazine aimed at folks like me wanting to read about suits and ties, phones and gadgets, hotels and cars, sandwiches and coffee – and of course jobs. I had no clue as to how to do that, but fortunately I met Steve, a local man with a longstanding career in publishing and journalism. He liked the concept and together we gave birth to ‘CoatHanger’ – so-called because of the sales rep’s stereotypical image of their jacket hanging in the back of their Mondeo.

Lucky break followed lucky break, including me getting on the telly to promote the magazine’s launch. For a whacky publicity stunt we found the world’s largest coathanger – a half-ton colossus – emblazoned it with the magazine’s logo and hired an open lorry to drive it up and down the M1. It wasn’t long before CoatHanger was on sale throughout Britain’s network of motorway services.

What fun! I found myself being invited to car launches with no extravagant expense spared. For example Suzuki took me to drive their Vitara around Nürburgring. Volvo invited me to Nice with their V70. And the icing on the cake – being flown out to Barcelona in Ford’s private jet to review their new Fiesta. 

Eventually, with the rising internet the demand for physical publications fell, CoatHanger coughed and spluttered to a gradual end – but not before a book deal was offered to reproduce our ever-popular ‘Bite Size Sales Tips’ in book form.

That became my first taste of becoming an author, and I liked its sweetness.