☰SEPTEMBER 2026

The Dying Light on tour

It's that time of year again, when I leave my kitchen in Whitley Bay and head out to meet readers and booksellers to spread the word about the new book. This year, I'll be going south, back to the beautiful West Country. The Dying Light is set on the North Devon coast where I grew up.

Recently, I've been thinking of my time as a teenager living in Barnstaple. Some former school friends have been posting photos of our time there. One at a fancy-dress party when we were in the sixth form, some at a bar by the beach that hosted music and theatre events. People I knew well were in a band and they played there. I'm still in touch with some of them. I think these memories fed into the book. My teenage years were idyllic, but there's more pressure on young people now and that's a theme I seem to come back to, perhaps because I have teenage grandchildren..

My UK tour starts in North Devon, at the Appledore Book Festival on September 27th. This is a lovely venue. I'm one of their patrons and I'm very much looking forward to returning to the tent. On Monday 28th, I'll be joining my friends at The Woodyard. The Woodyard is a fictional community hub and arts' centre in the Matthew Venn books, and it's one of my proudest achievements that a team of community activists has recreated it in Barnstaple. They've done our Reading for Wellbeing training, and I can't wait to meet everyone. That evening I'm hosting a Woodyard based Murder Mystery in the Fortescue Hotel. It's a fundraiser for the Woodyard and should be great fun. See if you can discover the murderer before Matthew does!

I'll be ending my British tour on Saturday October 10th at the Isle of Wight Festival. By wonderful coincidence Michael Gray, who taught me English at Barnstaple Grammar School will be there too, talking about his work on Bob Dylan. It'll be very interesting to meet him again. In between I'll be visiting indie bookshops all over the West Country and South Wales. See details below. It would great to see you at one of the events.

After a brief time to rest and catch up at home - including a North Tyneside Dying Light gig in The Exchange, North Shields, with the fab Forum Books on October 14th - I'll be off to Canada. I'll be in Toronto's Isabel Bader's Theatre on Monday October 26th, Halifax's Spatz Theatre on October 27th and Delta Hotel's Convention Centre in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island on October 29th. Very much a flying visit, and I'm not sure when I'll make it back, so do come along if you can.

I'm not visiting the US at the moment, so we'll try to put lots on socials so readers there can travel along with us. I've recently joined Instagram, so do follow me if you'd like to be with me virtually on the tour. There's already a fun video put together by my grandson Arthur, showing The Dying Light out in the wild in glorious Cornwall.