Most editors are passionate readers. But good editors are writers too — because they know the pain of facing a blank page, wrestling a book into shape, or rewriting a sentence sixteen times just to get the rhythm right. I know what I’m asking authors to do when I edit for them, because I’ve done it myself, numerous times.
My fiction tends toward the darker end of the spectrum — crime fiction, psychological suspense, domestic noir – and is often laced with black humour and complex relationships.
Short Stories
The Artist, a 2026 Derringer Award finalist for Best Short Story, follows a charming young pickpocket working the streets of London. But his extraordinary talent for the lift conceals an even more extraordinary secret. This story, originally published in Midnight Schemers & Daydream Believers (Superior Shores Press, Canada, 2025), was selected as a finalist from nearly 500 submissions to the Short Mystery Fiction Society. [Read it here.] (link coming soon)
Earlier work includes another short storyThe Ring, published in Sweet As (2014), a collection of contemporary New Zealand short fiction, and a 2013 novel extract published in Turbine, Victoria University’s literary journal.
Novels in Progress
I’m currently working on two novels, both of which sit firmly in crime fiction territory.
The Essence of Lying is a psychological suspense in which a sociopathic tech entrepreneur turns his digital expertise towards darker ends, manipulating and destroying the lives of his victims. It’s also about mothers and daughters, hidden secrets and identities, and the alarming ease with which digital realities can be rewritten. Think domestic noir with a contemporary tech-thriller edge.
Charlie Trent Isn’t Here is a darkly comedic crime thriller narrated by a con artist turned reluctant government asset. At her former partner-in-crime’s high-profile Cotswolds wedding, Charlie attempts to find a missing accountant, keep the bride from having a breakdown, and manage the inconvenient reappearance of the man she fell in love with nearly twenty years before–the man who taught her how to lie with impunity, deceive with intent, and get away with it every single time. Think Bella Mackie meets Lisa Lutz but with British humour.
If you’d like to read a taste of any of this, [The Artist is here], and short extracts from both novels are here: [The Essence of Lying] | [Charlie Trent Isn’t Here]. Fair warning — once Charlie starts talking, she’s quite hard to shut up.