Turning to my diaries again to help me with this introduction, I was surprised at the long gestation of Westwind. The first mention I can find is May 1987, and by June I was happily at work on it. At this time it was called Coffin Burial, and my one issue was that my typewriter needed repairing. In July 1987 I was chipping away at it while also editing Watchman. By August, I was having doubts, but in September, I was finding some of the writing ‘v exciting’ and ‘heart-pounding’. By December, the first draft of the book was finished and the title had been changed to Westwind. (I’m not sure where Coffin Burial came from – I did think it was a poem, but I can’t find it on the internet. My memory was, it might have been John Masefield, but again I can’t find it in a list of his works – though I did come across a poem of his called ‘The West Wind’. Coincidence?)

My agent read the book over the festive period and got back to me in January 1988. He was not enthusiastic and wanted major revisions before submitting it to a publisher. Okay, so by March I’d tweaked the book, but then everything seemed to go quiet. There was TV interest in Knots & Crosses and I was also working on a script for a potential film of my first novel The Flood. I was also getting ready for publication of Watchman and applying for jobs with a bit more pay than I was getting at Middlesex Poly. By May, I was at work on a new Rebus novel (which would eventually see the light of day as Hide and Seek) and by the summer I’d secured work as a journalist on a monthly magazine called Hi-Fi Review. Watchman was out and receiving some good reviews (if decidedly sluggish sales) and Westwind was languishing. By September, my agent was apologising that he still had no takers for the revised book. I was almost too busy to notice. My new job came with a ninety-minute each-way commute, during which I was devouring novels which I’d started reviewing for the newspaper Scotland on Sunday. I’d also been approached to pitch script ideas to ITV’s The Bill, and I was working away between times on the Rebus book …