'I wanted to be a writer but I'd blown it.'

‘I think my most stunning failure was that I managed to get a U in my English O level. I was devastated. I cried on my way home, because I thought the one thing I wanted to do, the one dream I'd always had, the one glimmer of hope I could hold on to, had been taken away from me. I wanted to be a writer but I'd blown it...

(After turning taxi driver and picking up the editor of Liverpool Confidential magazine, who said "Send me some tomorrow, I'll have a read.")

I went home and wrote a story, and it changed my life... And then I started to write a book. I created a British copper who'd lost it all, his wife, his kid, his house, his job, and his soul.'

Tony Schumacher, author of The Darkest Hour in the Observer magazine