Helen Taylor

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.