A Little Something to Hide is a series of short stories following the passengers of the Briscola Coach Service, traveling from San Francisco to Albuquerque. What was the inspiration for the original and fascinating idea at the center of the book?

Many years ago, in a time before ‘pandemic’ had entered the common lexicon, I attended a concert in Oxford with my wife and some friends to see Wildwood Kin, a British folk-rock trio famed for their glorious harmonies. The support act that evening, a duo called Ferris & Sylvester, equally blessed with talent, sang their song, ‘Burning River,’ conjuring in me the image of a distant place. I found the muse powerful in the music and my mind began to wander. The seeds for A Little Something to Hide were planted somewhere during the four or so minutes of that song, with the book beginning its life with a working title of Nearing Albuquerque. From the outset, I envisaged an omniscient narrative perspective, giving the narrator the ability to express each character’s darkest secrets. It was a speculative notion that gnawed at me, with characters popping into my head with their stories loosely formed. The dog and I went for walks and held one-sided conversations about what might unfold and the book started to take shape. I’m so glad I listened to her.

What are some things that you find interesting about the human condition that you think make for great fiction?

There is so much about popular culture today that obsesses about celebrity. Any number of shows delve into the lives of others, providing glimpses of their lifestyles and their motivations, which often manifest as an overwhelming desire for fame and recognition. What frustrates me about these shows is the vacuity of the central characters. I’m not remotely convinced that the façade that they present on screen is a true representation of who they really are, and if it is, they rarely demonstrate any great depth of personality – beyond the make-up and the trappings of consumerism, there’s not a lot that’s redeeming.

I am much more interested in ‘real’ people, those who are not defined by their celebrity, but by their very real existence. The struggles that they face, their unspoken truths, the secrets that they hide – those things are of far more interest to me and why, in A Little Something To Hide, I wanted to explore those who live amongst us and largely go unnoticed, to illustrate that ordinary people often lead extraordinary lives.

What were some themes that were important for you to explore in this book?

I didn’t consciously set out to explore any themes in the book, and those that appear, are a fortuitous coincidence. In developing each character, certain themes emerged. It wasn’t so much that I adopted them, more that I clung to their coattails, attempting to stay faithful to what unfolded. If there’s one that I think that pervades the novel, it’s that of perseverance; the desire to pursue that which a character most wants. Whilst many of the characters in A Little Something To Hide demonstrated phenomenal determination, others did not, demonstrating a complete lack of resilience. It was this dichotomy that I most enjoyed discovering.

I also enjoyed exploring that which gets left unsaid. The book is jammed with characters who choose not to share too much with the world, and I loved being able to eke their secrets from them as their stories unfurled.

What is the next book that you are working on, and when will it be available?

I’m really excited about the next book, the first draft of which I began writing in 2003. It’s titled, Dignity and is another book that draws its inspiration from a song, in this case, a 90s song of the same name from a Scottish band, Deacon Blue. The song tells the tale of a bin man who quietly goes about saving his money to buy a boat, with plans to sail to somewhere better than the streets he cleans. I love the premise of the song, again, it’s about a character who is fiercely determined to pursue his dream and is yet another story of an ordinary man with an extraordinary tale – I just had to write it! I’ve moved the location from the gritty streets of Glasgow to the more gentile location of my hometown, Petone, in New Zealand. The story is told through the eyes of a twelve-year-old boy who befriends the protagonist, with more than a token nod to Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man And The Sea. I’m still a couple of drafts away from sharing it and my hope is to have it out by the end of 2026.

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