CJ Hatton wants you dead. Not personally, and certainly not until you’ve read his novels, but he is drawn to fictional worlds where you and everyone you know don’t exist.

He was born in a north of England coal-mining town (whose lingo he does not speak) and raised on the leafy lanes of Kent (whose lingo he does speak). Between then and now were years in Shropshire, Glastonbury, Hampshire, Oxford, Yorkshire, Wiltshire, London and Bristol and a few other places. He’s a wanderer by experience and inclination with a love of the English countryside and no sense of loyalty. He’s been making stuff up for fun and profit since he was seventeen and has so far earned about £1400. Profit remains elusive; the fun is eternal.

At Ruskin College, Oxford, he studied Creative Writing and Critical Practice under the brilliant Tom Sherry and the late Helen Kidd. Oxford is amazing. Go there if you can. It has more great writers than any other city on Earth, probably. God knows how they afford the rent. Might explain why most of them are in their graves.

If CJ Hatton is any good at writing it’s because he has stood on the shoulders of better writers and forced them to give up their secrets. He thanks them all but will not say where the bodies are. He lives in Somerset.