My first taste of being an author was when I was thirteen. A boys’ comic published a feeble limerick I’d sent them and paid me ten shillings, a fat sum at that age. But the postal order was nothing compared with seeing my words in print.
Author – Mike Hollow
After that I kept writing – teenage poems for a late-1960s underground magazine, then grown-up poems, and later a happy mix of copywriting, journalism, editing and translating. All ways of getting paid for playing with words.
My CV? I was born in 1953 in the Essex County Borough of West Ham – home of the Blitz Detective – on the eastern edge of London. I grew up mainly in Romford and went to the Royal Liberty School, then studied Russian and French at Cambridge University.
My first job was translating for the BBC, and I did various jobs there for sixteen years before moving to work in communications for development agency Tearfund, travelling widely in Africa, Asia and Latin America. In 2002 I went freelance as a writer, editor and creative project manager. Now I spend all my time in the cellar of my house in Hampshire chronicling the adventures of the Blitz Detective.
Why write detective novels? Because I enjoy reading them and I love to create entertaining stories. Why the Blitz? Because overnight it turned everyday existence into a life-and-death struggle for ordinary people – and some of them were my family.
I like to hear from readers, so if you’d like to get in touch then please do via the Contact page.
Photo: Mark Wilson
