About Our CrimeBits Authors

In pursuit of greater challenges, and to escape the estate skinheads (great idea being a Goth!), Paul joined the Royal Marines Commandos. Although exceptionally fit, he struggled with ironing, something he had ample time to perfect during his 22-year military career.  

Paul then spent 12 years working in Afghanistan, gaining a broader understanding of the world and forming lifelong friendships with Afghan colleagues. While in Afghanistan and driven by a lifelong love for history and a flair for creative expression, Paul returned to academic education at the age of 54, studying for a degree in History and Creative Writing. After four years of study, through the fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban, Covid pandemic, and personal tragedy, he graduated.

Paul’s background, from the council estates of Cornwall to the frontlines of military service and beyond, gives him a particularly slanted lens to view the world. 

Rosie’s new memoir, If You’d Only Listen: A Medical Memoir of Gaslighting, Grit and Grace is available September. Her work has appeared in the Literary Medical Messenger, the Los Angeles Times, Mobius, the Chicago Tribune, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, University of Iowa Daily Palette and others. Her essays appear in popular anthologies, including the Magic of Memoir: Inspiration for the Writing Journey. In addition, she has been writing political satire for The Progressive Populist for the past six years. Prior to that she wrote a humor column for The Foolish Times for ten years. 

When old enough to amass his own to-be-read mountains, he ploughed his way through the genres from whodunnits to psychological thrillers, from cozy crime to Scandi noir. A regular attender of the big crime fiction festivals - he once suffered for 24 hours on a storm-lashed ferry to reach Shetland Noir – Dan also enjoys writing his own stuff for competitions.   

Before the Black Spring contest, Michael had never tried his hand at writing fiction, but something about the competition and its simultaneously open-ended and yet tightly constrained nature appealed and he gave it a go. Michael would love to write a book one day. 

Lorraine Thomson’s writing has appeared in a wide range of literary publications including Wyldblood Magazine, Epoch Press, and the Urban Pigs Hunger anthology. She is the author of seven novels, including neo noir thriller Boyle’s Law. Her first non-fiction book, Modernist Dreams Brutalist Nightmares, is a searingly honest and brutally funny memoir about being part of the first generation to grow up in Scotland’s most ambitious and experimental New Town. The sequel, Bitter Fruit, is an equally frank and darkly funny memoir set in the 1980s. 

Previously working as an Advertising Creative Director meant Richard was involved with advertising headlines and tag-lines so he has always been up for the challenge of creative writing. In 2013, he published my first book Complex Heaven, a story inspired by true events. Since then, he has built up quite a catalogue of novels and have received some really amazing reviews. Last year a Los Angeles company expressed interest in making my novel Bloodlust into a movie. 

Throughout a twenty-year advertising career, Graham honed his storytelling skills, progressing from a copywriter to becoming one of the country’s youngest Executive Creative Directors, and ultimately the CEO of a leading London marketing agency. During this time, he crafted narratives for major brands such as Amazon, Adidas, Mars and McDonald’s. Graham’s favourite genre to read is crime thrillers, and like many from a creative background, he has always dreamed of writing his own book. As an avid reader who has devoured every Lee Child novel, entering The Big Bang was the push he needed to start his journey as an author and create a thrilling novel of his own. 

Rachael is a crime writer from Los Angeles. Her mystery novel, The Split Decision, was a finalist in the 2019 CRAFT First Chapters Contest, and she has been selected for residencies at MacDowell, Storyknife, and Ragdale. Her short work has received the Tiferet Prize, semifinalist honors in the American Short(er) Fiction Contest and the Boulevard Creative Nonfiction Contest, and a Best of the Net nomination, and has appeared in various publications. An alumna of Antioch University Los Angeles' MFA program, she is also a 2021–22 BookEnds Fellow. 

Joanne is a theatre school owner from South Yorkshire. She’s a qualified teacher with a Performing Arts degree and a PGCE in Drama & English. She worked for 20 years in a Doncaster secondary school before leaving to set up Elite Theatre Arts. Joanne started by writing scripts and monologues for her classes and submitted a selection to LAMDA to be considered for their Anthology Volume 4, two pieces were selected for Grade 1 and 2. By then she had around one hundred monologues written, several plays and over 20 years of drama lesson plans. After initially self-publishing her Drama Pot series of books and a number of plays, her current books ‘The Ultimate Drama Pot collection, 100 Monologues for Young Performers’ and ‘Ultimate Drama Activities for the Classroom’ were picked up by independent publisher Salamander Street