Notes from the Downers

Where Books, Beliefs & Life Meet

I began writing Unscanned purely to entertain my son. At the time, it was about 2013. Adam was going on twelve and I’d spent years indoctrinating him into loving stories. (How could I possibly have a son who didn’t like to read?) His shelves were full of magic, Greek Gods – the chosen ones with supernatural abilities, special bloodlines, prophecies and powers. They were brilliant books and we both loved them.

But I wanted a story for him that was about an ordinary boy who has an adventure and becomes a hero. No magic. No powers. No bloodline. Just a boy in a difficult situation, working out what to do. So I started writing one for him.

I didn’t even think about it becoming a novel, let alone three. For the first book, Unscanned, there wasn’t any planning. I’d write one chapter at a time, read the chapter to Adam and watch his face.

That’s literally how the first draft of the book was written. Adam would sometimes tell me, “Is that all you have written?” which meant I’d got it right. Other times, he’d say, “No, that wouldn’t happen. I wouldn’t do that.” Or even, “That writing is lazy.” (Why did I ever teach him that phrase?) Funny thing was, he was mostly right!

Some scenes were purposely written to amuse him. There’s a moment where the protagonist plays Minecraft on a notepad whilst spying on a house, waiting for the owners to leave. That’s there because Adam loved Minecraft.

Other scenes I rewrote completely, because as I read it aloud, I realised some of his best reactions were when I hit the right tone or provided just the right hook at the end of a chapter. The ‘what happens next?’ factor. I loved it when he was disappointed there wasn’t more. It drove me to continue. That’s how Unscanned got finished. He kept asking. I kept writing.

The protagonist in Unscanned is named Adam – how could it not be? The kids he rescues in Books 1 and 2, are mostly named after Adam’s real friends. (I did ask their parents for permission.) Some of those people are still in Adam’s life now. Some aren’t. That’s how it goes when children grow up. But they’re all still there in the books, exactly as they were when they were eleven and twelve. On my pages, in my world, I still see them as they were, before time zipped forwards, before their exams, before they left school and before the pressures of the adult world were thrust upon them.

So, after Unscanned, I wrote Book 2: The Collector, and self-published it. Next came Book 3: The Upsider. However, I did nothing with it. It just sat on a shelf collecting dust for more than five years. I wasn’t sure I’d ever go back to it. The honest reason for this, is that I had to work. Writing books doesn’t always pay the bills, plus I got pulled into other writing projects. I wrote four more books during that time, of which two were published.

Over the first few years, I’d tried approaching agents and had many rejections. Thinking my work would just stay in the slush pile forever, I stopped sending anything out. I even began to wonder if my writing was good enough.

In the end, I self-published the whole series and I’m glad I did. There’s a lot more control over the process and I also learnt a lot about publishing.

When I finally pulled Book 3 manuscript off the dusty shelf, it was because of encouragement from my family. At that point, I realised I couldn’t just edit and publish Book 3 on its own, so Books 1 and 2 were revised and rewritten, as well as receiving a complete rebrand. Across 2025-2026, the whole series was reborn. Book 3: The Upsider, never seen before, launches on 30 April.

Adam is now twenty-two. He’s taking exams again. He’s told me he wants to read the series from the beginning when he’s finished his exams. That first reading of Unscanned, chapter by chapter, was a long time ago. His preference is different now. He likes strong characters from the outset, characters whose coming-of-age has already happened. The boy I wrote those books for has grown into the kind of reader who’d probably ask the writer to skip the bits where the protagonist is still finding his feet. And, that’s all right. The Unscanned books waited more than five years for me. They can wait a little longer for him.

In this long process, there was something I didn’t see for years and it was my sister, Mandy, who made me think about it.

“Your stories are good, but you your characters always have difficulty and hurdles to overcome.”

She was right. I hadn’t particularly noticed, as don’t all character have that? Conflict, tension – that sort of thing. But, as I thought about it more, I realised I do write about underdogs. Adam in Unscanned is a boy classified by his society as illegitimate, criminal, disposable, but he refuses to accept this classification and slowly organises the other classified-as-disposable kids around him into a team that fights back. The protagonist of The Apex Agenda is an underdog too, in a different way, in a different world.

It took me a while to see it, but I gravitate towards this type of character.

More recently, I was preparing a pitch for the TV pilot script, adapted from my novel The Apex Agenda, which I’d co-written with collaborative script writer, D. Scott-Jones. To pitch a series, you have to say something about yourself, why you wrote the work. And it hit me immediately. It’s what I say at work. I believe everyone should have an opportunity to thrive without oppression in a fair and just society. I know that doesn’t always happen. But there has to be hope in our lives. Otherwise, we lose motivation and aspiration.

These themes run through every book I’ve written.

In my day job, I co-manage a non-profit social enterprise called The Equality Practice. We work with businesses, communities, and individuals on the same issues my books talk about - who gets to thrive, how do we help those who have been told they are less, and what does it take to change that in an unfair world?

I built a course around it and we’ve been delivering it for over ten years to people who are often written off, overlooked or told they’ll amount to nothing. These people are isolated, vulnerable and lacking confidence in a system that has quietly decided, they don’t count. The course is about helping them find their dreams, their aspirations and learning how to take steps to change their lives.

The Unscanned series is about a boy who refuses to let anyone be left behind in an unjust system. I didn’t plan for my books and the day job to intertwine. I planned for them to be two separate parts of my life, but the principals and beliefs I hold are so embedded, so dominant, that they have crept into my writing, almost without me noticing. Only on reflection, do I see it. And now it’s out in the open!

If you’re still reading, then thank you. I’ll wrap this up soon.

You may be wondering where all this comes from?

I grew up on a council estate in Grimsby. My father was a fish filleter on the docks. My parents divorced when I was young, at a time when divorce was still frowned upon, and my mother raised five of us on her own. She told us, again and again, that we could do anything we set our minds to. My older brother was the first person in our family to go to university. I was the second.

Underdogs fighting a system and becoming stronger isn’t just a theme I picked up because it sells well in YA. It’s truly the air I grew up breathing.

Funnily, there’s a mother in the Unscanned Series too. She’s not on the page much, but she’s there. She fled to the Downers as a single mother to keep her son, Adam, safe from being classified as a non-contributor and taken to a compound. Underground, she became the person who writes the city’s newsletter - the chronicler, the one who keeps the people informed about the world above and the world below.

I realise there are a few comparisons here. My mother raised five children alone. I raised Adam alone. The mother in the Downers raises Adam underground, alone. Three real and fictional women refusing to let their children be classified by society as unworthy.

In my life, this is the belief I keep coming back to. Everyone can change their life if they want to and if they are given the opportunity. The problem is not everyone is given the opportunity. That’s what The Equality Practice exists to do something about. It’s also, when I look honestly at my books, what my protagonists represent. The opportunity to grow, to change to make a difference. Adam does this across all three books. Helping the kids around him live a different life, showing them a new way, because he recognises the system is unjust and unfair.

This Substack is going to be a place where my life, my books and beliefs meet.

Some posts will be from the world of the Unscanned Series and the real places I built into it. I even have photos. I’ll write about the choices I made in life and writing, the bits I didn’t get right the first time and the things I rewrote. Some will be about The Apex Agenda, which started life after I co-managed a transgender conference and found myself wondering what would happen if babies were born without a gender at all. How could that happen and how would that play out in an oppressive, controlling society?

Some of my articles may be about the work I do, the course, the people, and what fairness actually looks like when you try to build it and a writing career – and still have to pay the bills.

But all of it will come from the same place. The view from underneath, from where I came from that made me what I am today. That’s why I called this article: Notes from the Downers: Where Books, Beliefs & Life Meet

Thank you for being here and staying till the end. Book 3 of the Unscanned Series, The Upsider, launches on 30 April. You can find Unscanned, The Collector, and The Upsider on Amazon and in good bookstores. The Apex Agenda - book 1, is out there too.

And Adam, when his exams are done - well, I’m hoping he will pick up my books again and perhaps re-discover the boy I wrote them for, hiding beneath all that growing up stuff.

Let me know if you want notifying when I write the next piece.

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