What is your name?
Dan Laughey.
When did you first realise you wanted to be a writer?
I can't remember! I suppose reading great stories started the ball rolling. And reading a book on my own, not listening to someone reading, triggered the urge to write. Creative writing classes at middle school made a big impression, too. Now I come to think about it, I've been writing for as long as I recall. I wanted to be a playwright once upon a time. I wrote a couple of stage plays at university. I've still got the scripts, gathering dust, waiting for that elusive troupe to breathe life into them.
What genre books do you write?
Crime thrillers and mysteries.
What is the name of your book/books?
Chloe: Lost Girl (Book 1) and Chloe: Never Forget (Book 2). As the titles suggest, the books are sequential.
Were there alternate endings you considered?
Yes. Endings are difficult. But then, all good things come to an end. Actually, the endings to both Chloe books only act as breaks. The real narrative never ends.
If you could tell your younger writing self anything, what would it be?
Less telling, more showing.
Does your family support your career as a writer?
My wife's a great cook. She feeds me; provides me with energy. And my two sons offer encouragement. They even read some of my stuff. Not everything I write is meant for children's eyes. But that doesn't seem to put them off.
What’s the most difficult thing about writing characters from the opposite sex?
The psychology thing. Men and women think differently, and feel differently, about a range of things. Biologically, we're 99 percent identical, but processes of nurturing (not nature) knock all that biology nonsense on the head. Boys like blue. Girls like pink. Still, I enjoy the challenge. We all laugh at the same things, after all.
Does writing energise or exhaust you?
Both. Anyone who's tried to write something substantial - whether fiction or fact - knows how mentally draining the experience is. The key is to enjoy it. Test the boundaries of the imagination. Make yourself laugh. Or cry. Writing is deeply emotional. Emotions are positive. Live the dream.
What items do you surround yourself with when you write?
I write in different places. I don't have a study or an office or anything approaching a fixed desk space. The one thing I can't do without is a broadband connection. I'd be lost without the world wide wait- I mean, web.
What is your favourite genre of books to read?
The same as I write. I prefer old books as a general rule. The best crime fiction was written on paperback before 1980.
What is your favourite childhood book?
My favourite childhood author was Enid Blyton. I don't really have a favourite book. 'Danny, the Champion of the World' by Roald Dahl sticks in the memory. The main character had the same name as me, which was nice. I read the story to my sons a few years ago. It hooked me all over again!
Do you have a favourite author or one who inspires you to write?
Not really. I can count on the fingers of one hand the writers who tick all the boxes - or most of them. They were all writing in the last century.
What words of wisdom would you give to someone who wants to be an author?
Go for it. Oh, and read, read, read. Read the best of all possible books. Then write.
A missing student. A gunned-down detective. A woman in fear for her life. All three are connected somehow.
Detective Inspector Carl Sant and his fellow officers get on the case. But what links the disappearance of a university student, the death of an off-duty police sergeant, and a professor reluctant to help them solve the case?
Their only clue is a sequence of numbers, etched by the police sergeant Dryden on a misty window moments before he breathed his last. Soon it becomes clear that Dryden's clue has brought the past and present into a head-on collision with the very heart of Sant’s profession.
Racing against time, D.I. Sant must find out what's behind the mysterious events - before the bodies start piling up.
An off-duty detective gunned down. A dead woman. A student missing, feared dead. And now, a former policeman in search of his past. All these people, dead or alive, have one thing in common. D.I. Carl Sant must discover what it is.
A series of cold-case enquiries leads D.I. Sant and his colleagues to investigate a botched assassination plot dating back to the 1980s. The deeper they dig into the case, the more secrets are revealed, including shocking connections to the infamous National Front.
Meanwhile, the memory of former P.C. Tanner, survivor of the assassination horror, is beginning to recover. Sant must find Tanner, and find out who is behind it all - before his superiors lose their rag and more lives are lost.
