If, after five years, I hadn't had anything published, I was just going to forget it and go back to TV full-time until I retired or they put me out to pasture.
— Simon Toyne
If you look back to the earliest religions, before they got organized and started building churches and amassing wealth, they all sprang from the same place - they were inspired by nature.
I'm certainly not the first author to tiptoe into the conspiratorial, religious-tinged territory, but - and I hate to break this to the faithful - neither is Dan Brown.
My family and I live in a wing of a Georgian mansion in East Sussex, which was built in the 1780s and fell into disrepair. It was rescued in the Seventies and carved into six terrace houses.
I figured if I write a modern thriller but spliced in the DNA of a classic western - the drifter who comes into town with secrets - I could do something interesting with both genres. Westerns are also an incarnation of the classic knight errant tale, the lone warrior with a moral code, and I love those types of stories.
I love Westerns. They're a unique creation of American mythology.
I love researching all sorts of weird stuff. I always say, 'God help me if the FBI came across my Internet search history.'
Quest stories are about the oldest form of narrative there is, and they're also the perfect metaphor for life because we're all on a journey trying to figure out where we're going and who we are. 'Solomon Creed' is just doing it with more danger and guns involved.
I hate it when characters know things but only reveal them when it's convenient to the story. I'd never do that. That's cheating.
'The Searcher,' as the title suggests, is about someone in search of something, and I have always loved quest stories and so was drawn to writing one myself.
I knew from my television work that I could sit down and put words on paper but didn't know if I had the talent to tell a story in novel form.
It's interesting to note that when something like a virus tries to poison us, the first thing our bodies do is heat up. We burn away the infection. Maybe that's what Earth is doing to us.
We have long suspected that the faceless organisations that run our world - be it the church, multinational conglomerates or the government - keep things from us.
When I set out to write 'Sanctus,' all I wanted to do was craft a piece of high quality entertainment.
All writers steal. You might as well steal from the best.
I wrote 'The Searcher' because I love westerns, and they've fallen out of fashion.
Epic stories, especially 'quest narratives' like 'The Iliad' and 'The Odyssey,' are brilliant structures for storytelling. The quest lends itself to episodic storytelling.
One of the things that made me try writing novels was I could take time off to be with the kids. That's the practical side of what I love about the writing life.
'Solomon Creed' is a man who knows everything about everything but nothing about himself and is on a journey of redemption to try and reclaim his identity.
The author always knows more than the reader does at the start of a novel, and gradually, they share that knowledge with the reader - that's storytelling.
'Sanctus' deals with creation myths in every culture. It fascinates me that all cultures, evolving independently, have similar models of mankind's origins, of a Greater Being, of the flood, and so on. It's amazing how they crop up time and time again.
I looked back at the years since I'd left college and thought of the list of things I'd have liked to do. I'd always wanted to write a book - not a small undertaking. I never felt I had the time or creative energy to spare in order to write one as well as I wanted.
We can make a concerted effort to stop poisoning the planet: that would be a good way of appeasing the gods.
If you do come across 'Sanctus' in a bookshop, please see past the cross on the cover and the sinister outline of a monk and just read the first page and make your own mind up. If it's still not for you, then that's fine; just put it back and walk away.
It is easy to be inspired by history when you're living in a part of it and allow that to seep into your writing: having said that, a minimalist room with no distractions is often better; the most exciting visions should already be in your head.
The largest two books I've ever read more than once are 'Bleak House' by Charles Dickens and 'The Stand' by Stephen King, about 1,200 pages each.
If you look at the great Westerns, and at Greek, Roman, and Norse mythology, they all contain elements in common: a harsh landscape; demons or outlaws trying to stop or kill the protagonist; and there are mythical legends at their core, innate in all cultures.
'Sanctus' was done on speculation. I had no agent or publisher. I was being sensible, I suppose, by writing a standalone novel. I figured if that one didn't work, no one would be interested in reading a sequel.
I love that I can work from home and take my kids to school every day.
As a writer, I always try as hard as possible to get out of the way of the story, so maybe that's the most important thing my readers should know - I'm all about the story, not about the ego.
I think 'The Searcher' is a departure from my first because it's less grounded in religion and is far more rooted in the mythic tradition: more of an existential thriller where the main character is actually the central mystery, and his journey is all about trying to figure himself out.
As a television producer, you do a lot of writing - drafting proposals for pilot shows and other things, so yes, a good deal of writing was involved.
