Story behind my stories podcast

I decided at Christmas that I wanted to write full time, give up the main job. Retire. At first I didn't frame it as writing. I framed it as retiring. That is what I told people I was doing and being able to retire ten years early is a wonderful thing. Those that know me will tell you I wasn't going to slow down, rest and retiring didn't mean what it should. That will come later I'm sure but not right now.

When I first had the idea for The Author Season of The Story Behind My Stories podcast back in June, I thought it would be a small, quiet project. Something I could do to genuinely support indie authors, fill the gaps between my own podcast seasons and share the stories behind the stories we all carry. I didn’t expect what happened next.

Rugby is a world built on values. You hear them often — tradition, loyalty, honour, respect — but you only truly understand them when you see them lived. So when I began writing Die Trying, I faced a question that mattered deeply to me: How do you write crime fiction inside a world built on honour — without breaking the very values that make that world special?

Being welcomed into that world, I realised something important. Rugby is hard — physically, emotionally, historically. But it is also gentle. It is built on values that are lived, not spoken: tradition, loyalty, honour, respect. I saw those values in the people I met. I felt them in the way I was welcomed. And I carried them with me when I sat down to write Die Trying.

Today feels like one of those days where showing up matters, not because everything is tidy, but because it isn’t.

Retirement is supposed to come with a sense of closure. A handshake. A thank you. A moment of recognition for the years you’ve poured into a business, the clients you’ve supported, the problems you’ve solved, and the growth you’ve driven. But sometimes life doesn’t hand you the neat ending you deserve.

A new series called The Story Behind My Stories. It sits alongside my crime fiction, but it isn’t fiction at all. It’s the real-life thread that runs beneath the books: the places I’ve lived, the work I’ve done, the people I’ve met and the moments that quietly shaped the stories long before I ever wrote them down.

I’m in the final few days of this Crete stretch, and as usual, the end creeps up faster than I expect. One minute I’m settling into a routine, the next I’m counting backwards from three and trying to work out how much I can realistically get done before we start the long drive home.

And then there’s the other world — the one I built quietly, in the early mornings and late evenings, in notebooks, in half‑formed ideas held in my head. The world of stories. The world of DI Matthew Goodwin and Penny Stock. The world where I get to decide the pace, the stakes, the silence.

When readers think of Aloha Goodbye, they picture the Pearl of the Pacific: the ocean, the heat, the endless decks, and the murder that pulls DI Matthew Goodwin into an investigation he never planned to lead.

Some detectives walk into a room and make noise. Penny Stock walks in and makes progress. Her introduction in Connecting Trains is classic Penny: no drama, no ego, no need to announce herself. She simply steps in and starts organising the evidence, computers and the murder board.

This week Thai Die is on promo, and Don’t Die for Me, Argentina is heading towards its full launch on 2nd May. Two books set on opposite sides of the world, shaped by two very different chapters of my life — but tied together by one unexpected thread. Horses.

There are moments when life feels like it’s handing you a metaphor with a bow on it. Last Friday, somewhere between Dijon and the Italian border, we had one of those moments. We’d pumped up a flat tyre the night before, hoping it would magically behave itself for the long drive. It didn’t. Of course it didn’t.

One of the constants in my writing life is that real experiences are fundamental in my fiction. Sometimes it’s a location I know well. Sometimes it’s a conversation I once had, or a character trait borrowed from someone I met years ago. It’s never a direct lift, and it’s never the whole story. But on The Story Behind My Stories, there isn’t that same layer of distance. When I talk about what inspired a scene or why a character behaves the way they do, I’m talking about the re

And when I write, whether it’s crime fiction, travel‑infused adventure, or the behind‑the‑scenes stories that shaped them, those places come back to life. They remind me who I was, what I felt and why the story mattered in the first place.

Lately, my writing life has stopped behaving like tidy shelves labelled “fiction” and “non‑fiction”. Instead, everything seems to be talking to each other — ideas crossing over, themes echoing, one project nudging another awake. And honestly, I’m enjoying the chaos.

This work has brought me the love of my life. It brought me my retreat in Crete. It brought me health and fitness, including two surgeries — knee and nasal — that sat on last year’s manifestation list like quiet, brave intentions. It brought me deeper connections, inside and out. And at the start of 2025, it brought me a call I couldn’t ignore: return to writing.

So yes, the fervour around KU and AI is real. But my response is simple: I will keep writing from the raw, unfiltered truth of my own experience. Because that is the one thing AI can never replicate.

When I first became a writer, I thought I was a content creator. And I was—original content, the written word, the story itself. The book was the content. Simple. Pure. Mine. But no one tells you that once you publish, the content creation doesn’t end there. In fact, it multiplies.

Travel doesn't just inspire me. It immerses me in the sensory details that makes my fiction feel alive.