A one-year-in-advance warning....
In June 2026 I'll be publishing my first full length volume of all-new fiction in 26 years. It's called Warning Signs, it's my 6th book and it'll be published by Comma Press. You can pre-order your copy here. The placeholder text on the Amazon page is not correct. The book is a standard 300 pages, not 160 - nor is it 0.4cm thick!
Comprising 7 totally new 'long short' stories created especially for this return to fiction, Warning Signs was written to entertain - to thrill, chill, intrigue, delight, uplift, shock and inspire, with bold characters, strong settings, a dash of insanity (I hope) and plenty of back and forth. One of my fantastic editors hailed "such strong and timely themes, expertly plotted." I'd say I like a lurid yet solid psychodramas with loads of movement and stuff you can sink your teeth into.
I had a blast crafting the stories and I hope you have a blast reading them, especially if you love... let's see, what would the dream team be... Daphne du Maurier, Angela Carter, Edgar Allen Poe, Jordan Peele, R F Kuang, Anna Biller, Italo Calvino, Alan Moore, Diana Wynne Jones, the League of Gentlemen, Susan Hill, Saltburn, Stephen King, John Carpenter, Shirley Jackson, The Wicker Man, Black Mirror, It Follows, Blumhouse's films, Shudder’s slate of films, the TV series Atlanta, ancient Chinese folktales, 2000s Japanese horror movies, The Babadook, M Night Shyamalan, Stranger Things, the first Twilight film, Dario Argento and other giallo cinema, exploitation shock schlock and B movies, Ana Lily Amirpour, Anne Rice, Hammer Horror and all contemporaries, spin-offs, spoofs, and tributes thereof. All the stories are set in contemporary England.
There are more details to come - watch this space - and press releases will go out in March 2026. I love the 'long short' format as both a reader and writer and am delighted to be working with Comma Press. We’ve already collaborated on three new fiction anthologies in recent years - Resist (2020 - in my story Occupied Territory, a warrior woman in Roman-occupied ancient Britain joins Boudica's army and proceeds to slash and burn through the country), The Cuckoo Cage (2022 - in my story Lady Swing a seemingly meek household staff member allegedly descended from witches terrorises a modern day country estate alongside a community of secret rebels and a mythical beast) and Collision (2023 - in my story Afterglow, ambitious nuclear scientists jockey for position at CERN with bonkers slash disastrous exciting consequences). The three stories I wrote for those anthologies are not in my forthcoming book as I wanted to give you totally new work.
I haven't exactly been away from public life - quite the opposite since my entire 33 year career is in mass media. But in terms of releasing a full length volume of new fiction, it's been a minute. Or a quarter of a century.
Warning Signs is my sixth book. It follows my short film series Aurora (2020-2023), first short film An Impossible Poison (2017), my fifth book Asylum and Exile: Hidden Voices (2015) and the bound essay The Future of Serious Art (2020). You can find my overall career stuff and job factoids right here if you must.
For a quick overview of the book side of things specifically you can look at the old My Writing Life interview I did for the Royal Literary Fund and maybe also this for Renaissance One, and for a full bibliography which includes all anthology contributions, you can look here. I started my journalism and broadcasting career in my mid-teens and published two novels at 18 and 21 (respectively: Seahorses in 1997 with Flamingo/HarperCollins after that famous book-deal-at-16, then Too Fast To Live in 2000 with Duckworth) before focusing on memoir and narrative non-fiction for my subsequent books.
During those early years of my career I never felt that writing literary fiction novels was quite me, despite working with amazing editors, agents and PRs, making good friends among my contemporaries, having a fantastic time generally and being supported by respectful critics and readers. From 2000 onwards I accepted commissions for short story anthologies and I'm so pleased that things have come around. I've found my groove and I intend to continue publishing fiction when opportunities arise and inspiration strikes.
I signed the Warning Signs deal at the end of 2023 and spent the whole of 2024 doing deep dives into each story with total focus, writing large - almost novel length every time - and then cutting down, compressing and polishing carefully to deliver only the good stuff: exciting, tangy, lurid psychodrama with a serious undertow. Above all I want to thrill and entertain and I very much hope you enjoy the collection when it comes out.
