Graeme Shimmin was born in Manchester, UK in 1967, so he’ll never see England win the World Cup. According to his Mother, his first word was ‘satellite’. It was downhill from there. After graduating from Durham University, he lived in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne for several years. Despite this, he still has a soft spot for Newcastle United. He worked freelance for various rapacious financial institutions on a series of dysfunctional, disastrous and/or otherwise doomed projects until 2003, when he decided to throw it all away and become a writer. The subsequent almost total reduction in income led to him moving to Donegal, Republic of Ireland for three years to live in a cottage with half a roof. Eventually he came back to Manchester to do an MA in Creative Writing. The weather was better in Manchester, so that was something. He was shortlisted for the Terry Pratchett Award in 2013, leading to the publication by Transworld of his first novel, A Kill in the Morning.