My first thriller, Stealing Fire, was published in 2011 under the pseudonym Craig Sterling, a name developed with a couple of friends in the back of a Peugeot 205 Estate Car one cold and rainy night in 2001, somewhere in a back road in Hertfordshire. It had to be something Scottish, and something connected to the enormous amounts of lucre I was sure to earn from writing thrillers. Yeah right.
Stealing Fire was picked up by Leamington Books in Edinburgh almost as soon as I’d finished it. Launched in June 2011, the book sold two print runs in six weeks and was selected for the Rome Film Festival 2011.
Rome was quite an experience. I met ten film producers from all over Europe and sat near Ennio Morricone, Richard Gere and Michelle Yeoh. I also walked the red carpet behind Boy George and others, which necessitated the purchase of a whole new wardrobe, very rapidly, from the boteghe on the Via Appia. As a typically scruffy writer, I received the shortest (and rudest) of answers to my desperate plea for a pair of shoes at one trendy boutique.
In 2022, my satire, "By Any Other Name", will appear via Terror House Publishing in the US and Europe.
Reviews of Stealing Fire
“This debut novel shoots straight for the silver screen – it’s Sterling stuff from this Capital author.”
- The Edinburgh Evening News (Click here for the complete review.)
“The plot moves at breakneck pace: it’s like James Bond on speed.”
- The Irish Examiner (Find the complete review here.)
“At once a gripping yarn and a thought-provoking expose of the murky world of international arms dealing… terrific.”
- Stephen Thompson, author of Toy Soldiers (Sceptre Books)
