Other writing
As well as writing crime novels, I continue to write for other media. My television sitcom, After Henry, is, I’m glad to say, currently available on DVD. And its radio incarnation is frequently repeated on the wonderful BBC 7, along with other of my series like No Commitments, Smelling of Roses and Foul Play.
On Radio 4 I am delighted that my actor detective Charles Paris is having a new lease of life, with the wonderful Bill Nighy playing the part in excellent adaptations of my books by Jeremy Front. The first series of those is available as a BBC audio book, and a four-part adaptation of Cast, In Order of Disappearance was on Radio 4 earlier this year, as well as three half-hour humorous plays which I wrote under the tile People In Cars.
Another forty-five-minute play called Quirks has also been commissioned by Radio 4.
And a stage play of mine, A Healthy Grave, has been published by Josef Weinberger.
One of my most unusual writing commissions happened a couple of years ago, when I wrote the script for A Story Set in Stone, a son-et-lumière to celebrate nine hundred years of Chichester Cathedral. Though I have always been wary of writing anything set in the past (knowing enough history to know how little I know), the success of that show has encouraged me perhaps to have a go at writing something else with an historical background.
So I hope to continue to keep the same variety in the stuff I write. Crime novels are enormous fun, but writing books is a solitary activity. Writing scripts to be performed by actors is much more sociable. So are those moments when I actually do a bit of acting myself. And, like all writers, I do need to get out of the house more!
