How Peter James helped Graham Bartlett become an author

Almost without exception, one of the first questions I am asked is, have you always wanted to become a writer?

Ask that of any other author and you’re likely to get an inspiring story of how they started writing as a child and maybe submitted their first efforts to a publisher from whom they still have the polite but definitive thanks but no thanks letter.

Ask me and you will get a very different reply. I had absolutely no ambition or notion to be a writer in any shape or form. It came to me out of the blue after I retired from the police.

Writing even a pamphlet, let alone a full-length novel, was so far off my radar that I would have questioned someone’s sobriety if they suggested it.

Me becoming a novelist is a lesson in grabbing chances when they present themselves and allowing hard work and fate to determine what happens next.

When Peter James asked me whether I would consider writing a nonfiction book with him, telling the stories behind the Roy Grace novels, I genuinely thought he was talking to someone else.

After a to and fro about why he would want to sacrifice his career by partnering up with someone as untried and tested as me, he convinced me it would be an exciting idea and that, with his guidance, I might even find the writer within.

In fairness he had seen some blogs and articles I’d written whilst I was in the police so he knew that the ground was not completely fallow, but it was a risk.

I remember starting with an unbidden sense of excitement, sending him chapters telling stories of murder, corruption and intrigue linking them to his hugely successful novels.

The feedback I received was both gentle and direct. After many false starts something clicked and with his nurturing, I found the right voice and he seemed confident we might actually complete the project.

I can’t tell you how much that spurred me on. Even going back and rewriting everything that I had previously submitted in that tone was an utter joy and it was at that moment I found my ability for and love of writing.

Incredibly, we did manage to finish the book, “Death Comes Knocking. Policing Roy Grace’s Brighton”, and somehow it became a Sunday Times Top Ten Bestseller.

That accolade was not a dream come true as it simply never occurred to me. However, by being gifted the opportunity and working tirelessly at it, the Sunday Times validation (of which there have been more) proved to me that I could actually write, a revelation which amazed many, most of all me.

I’ve gone on to write more books, both nonfiction and fiction, and now find myself advising hundreds of other writers on how to write authentic policing and crime scenes whilst also running courses for new and fledgling authors on the craft of writing.

The moral behind this story is that all of this happened in my very late 40s. Thirteen years on that seems quite youthful, but it could have been an age where I thought that I had discovered all there was to know about myself, any talents I possessed had already been unearthed and that I should settle into middle age content with who I was and what I’d become.

I’m certainly not a household name on the literary circuit and my novels don’t bring in huge wealth but I do have an incredible sense of achievement and satisfaction in a world that couldn’t be further from my previous career.

I still see myself as the new boy; it took over five years before I called myself an author.

I sometimes struggle to make sense of the industry and world I now work full time in but am blessed to be on this journey of discovery and to have the chance to see the world through different lenses.

I could have followed a more conventional post-police career route. That suits many but having had this golden second wind of opportunity and loving what I do now, that would drive me to distraction.

Former Brighton and Hove police chief Graham Bartlett’s Brighton-based Jo Howe crime novel series continues with City on Fire which is now available in paperback.