Hello. I’m Darryl, and I write crime fiction. I’m a former British police officer, and I blog about writing and mental health too. Here’s my story.

I’d always enjoyed writing as a teenager and, and one point, quite fancied a career creating compelling stories. Unfortunately, adulthood crept in somewhere in my early twenties to ruin the fun. Bills needed to be paid, and that meant getting what is often referred to as a real job.

There is no idea so brilliant or original that a sufficiently-untalented writer can’t screw it up.

-Raymond E.Feist

Policing is as real as it gets. I joined the job at twenty-three after studying Criminal Psychology at Southampton. It was an interesting course, but hadn’t prepared for the challenging and gruesome experiences I’d have as a police officer.

I still wanted to write during my twenties and I managed to successfully submit a few short stories for publication, but, due to working crazy shifts and quick turnarounds, I couldn’t achieve the momentum required to complete anything longer than a few thousand words.

Despite loving the job, working conditions for police officers in the UK plummeted under Teresa May’s government and their short-sighted austerity measures. The time had come to decide whether I was going to commit to policing for the rest of my working life or decide to put my pen to the page and write.

A story is a letter that the author writes to himself, to tell himself things that he would be unable to discover otherwise.

-Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Momma didn’t raise no fool. I knew I couldn’t just switch from policing straight to writing full time. As I’d always been adept with the English language, I flew to Seoul in South Korea to teach English while writing my first novel. Over time, I’ve moved to teaching English online, which has given me a lot more free time and I’ve published three books too. You can find those books on Amazon, but don’t go yet. The next bit is important.

It’s been quite a journey and I often wonder if I’ll ever really make it as an author. I’ve discovered a lot about life and work along the way, including how to overcome bouts of depression. Fun stuff.

I’ll be blogging about my writing processes, my successes and failures, and how to cope and thrive while living with a mental health condition.

I’d love for you to stick around.