BILL KITSON ON HIS WRITING INSPIRATION

I’ve always loved reading. Even as a child I enjoyed my father’s collection of crime novels. For long enouh I believed my love of the genre was inherited from him. Recently, however, I’ve been thinking there might be a different genetic connection.

I began writing when laid up following a knee operation. The resulting spy thriller ended up where it belonged — in the shredder — but I was hooked.

The plot for my first published thriller came from a memory of fishing in a remote mountain tarn with very deep water.

Although my main focus has been the DI Mike Nash thrillers, I have also written the Cowgill family saga, plus a number of romances. All royalties from the romances go to Elepap, a disabled children’s charity in Crete.

One pleasant surprise is how well my books, particularly the thrillers, have been received in Australia. Although I was born and bred in Yorkshire, I am part Australian. Sadly, I never met my maternal grandmother, Lily Eva Pointon, who was born in Tasmania.

Research conducted by my cousin revealed that eleven of our ancestors were transported as convicts, three of them on the First Fleet. I am proud of that ancestry, and perhaps this genetic inheritance helped spawn my love of crime fiction.

There is also another possible genetic link, via my lifelong passion for cricket, as a player, umpire and administrator. The research revealed that a branch of the Pointon family name had later become Ponting, and former Australian captain Ricky Ponting is a distant relative. He was a far better batsman than me, though!

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