Paperchase was the original name for Chasing Paper. The book came into existence because, way back in the early 1980’s I was running a building company in Norfolk, England. I won’t bore you with the details but, not to put too fine a point on it, my partner screwed me over for more than £25,000 ($40,000), which is about £75,000 ($120,000) in today’s money. Looking back, I have nobody to blame but myself: I trusted him and he grabbed the opportunity to save his own business at my expense. It left a nasty, bitter taste in the mouth, but my lesson was learned and I never again placed that amount of trust in any business partner!

Paperchase uses real life to create a plot

What I did do, though, was to write Paperchase twenty years later because it was both catharcic and also it had the makings of a good plot. Naturally, I had to embellish the story and then take the main character much further than anything I had ever experienced myself, but I guess that’s what lots of writers do. Eventually, Paperchase morphed into Chasing Paper, but the story is unchanged. I read an article the other day that suggested that you take your character, put him/her in a bad situation, make it worse, add some personal problems, chase them up a tree and then throw stones at them! That’s about what my life felt like that year back in 1980. Things have been a lot smoother since but if I wrote about that, it would bore the pants off you, so my bad experience became my first book and something positive came out of something negative. Way to go!

You can read an excerpt from Chasing Paper here

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