It seems odd to be poring over the bones of New York City in 1980 when I'm sitting on the slowly lifting and falling dock of a lake on a still Canadian morning. I'm not sure how many years it's been now since I started The Death and Life of Red Henley (three, four?) but I do know that it, like CCMS, started out as a completely different book. Different characters, different ideas, just the notion…

A few years ago I tried to leave London (in truth, I think I was trying to get away from myself, but that's for another time). I gave away most of my books, my music, my DVDs (the Oxfam shop in Kentish Town, littered with remnants of my past, had a display window that looked the Wilding Bazaar and Emporium, I winced each time I went past), packed up my little flat and headed for an even smaller space…

What was it Bukowski said, the days run away like wild horses over hills?  I have a friend who sometimes chides me for my occasional dramatic flourish (I say occasional), but as the hours and days count down to the deadline for my second novel, The Death And Life Of Red Henley, I'll admit to feeling a little skittish, the odd pulse-quicklening moment as we creep towards the final target as it…

Forty-five days in to the Unbound pledge campaign for The Death and Life Of Red Henley seems like a good time as any to marvel/recoil/reflect on the whole thing so far. At ninety days the thing goes dead, apparently, but, pleasingly, at the halfway mark we're at 73%, which is tantalisingly close to our target and could see me with a new tattoo (I have the first novel title Cross Country Murder…

So just over a year later after I handed over the manuscript of my second novel, The Death And Life Of Red Henley, to some North American producers (film and TV, but more latterly TV, as that’s where the money is, though not in my case), they’ve handed it back. In truth, I’ve missed her, I’ve gone back over the pages many time, tinkering here, readdressing there, I spent a few months crafting a TV…