About Steve Harris

I was born in Winchester hospital on 29th September, an event my father swears would never have happened if he hadn't opened those wine gums on the way home from work that cold January day and become inebriated. I've lived in Basingstoke ever since. Between the ages of 0 and five I managed to burn the skin from my hands in a hot oven, fall off my trike and smash my skull into the fine chromium radiator grille of the vet's car and drop the better part of a railway sleeper onto my head.

Between the ages of five and somewhen in my teens I narrowly escaped being educated, read Phillip K Dick, learned to play the guitar and became adept at running away from skinheads. I only got cornered once - in an outside pub toilet and my face said hello to a big red Doctor Marten a lot of times. Eventually I was rescued by bar staff who happened by and thought from the repeated thudding noises that someone was stuck in the john and trying to kick their way out. My jaw still clicks when I open it.

Jobs were scarce when I left school, but I got one in an ammunition depot, taking apart dangerously corroded 105mm Howitzer shells and pre-war hand grenades. One day - in a building containing enough high explosive to re-stage the Dresden bombing - someone at the next bench to me dropped a heavy tank shell on its pointy little nose. Smoke came out. I really learned how to run that day. The UXB people later told me that I had been quite safe as only four of the five safety devices built into the fuse cap had been blown through.

Joined a rock and roll band as a bassist in my early twenties. Switched to jazz/funk in the mid seventies before it was fashionable. The band started to get popular. Wrote and demoed songs and then along came the good old Sex Pistols and suddenly musical ability was no longer anything to do with getting record deals. If you didn't spike and dye your hair, dress from Seditionaries and spit at people no one wanted to know. The band folded in late 1980 and in 1981 Steve took a biro and a notebook and started to tell lies.

I drove vans for money. Built sewers. Spray painted houses. Laid concrete. Took photographs. Developed films. Played in pub bands. And in the evenings I wrote short stories. Then I wrote a novel called Pressure Drop in longhand. Found out how much typists charge for manuscripts then bought an electric and taught myself to type. I thought Pressure Drop (which was about a psychic who got involved in a plot to kill the P.M.) was good. I may have been wrong. Everyone in the country rejected it.

I wasn't easily discouraged. I bought a word processor and started to type quicker. Shelves collapsed under the weight of print-outs. The postal service began to write me letters of thanks for my support. Something had to give under the pressure.

Then an editor at Headline Books named Richard Evans read one of my manuscripts and liked it...