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Ann Bloxwich
Sub-genre: mystery, noir, Procedural
I’m a short, tattooed crime writer, with a profound love of books, cats, rock music, tea, and cardigans (I blame Starsky and Hutch for that!). I’m married to Paul and have four human children and two feline ones. I’ve previously worked as an Oompa Loompa in a chocolate factory, a night care officer in a residential home, and had my own promotions company which involved male strippers and drag queens, but gave it up and moved to Scotland to concentrate on my writing. I’ve now made the leap to self-publishing and have just re-released the first book (see below for the blurb), which is available from bookshops, libraries and via Amazon. It’s also available on Kindle Unlimited.
‘What Goes Around’, is a character-led police procedural, set in the West Midlands, and is the first in a new series featuring DI Alex Peachey. He’s a detective who is happily married, and has a son with Cerebral Palsy and Asperger’s Syndrome. I drew on a lot of my own experiences when I wrote this book, including that of being a parent to a disabled child. This is something I’d not seen in fiction before, and I felt it brought an air of authenticity to Alex’s story, and also shows the unseen side of living with this situation. In this book, Alex is called in from leave to investigate the murder of a woman at a local ladies night.
The second book, ‘Goodnight, God Bless’, will be re-released at the end of October 2024. This one sees Alex dealing with some delicate issues when someone starts killing paedophiles, whilst also dealing with some serious personal issues. Again, I drew on my own personal experiences of being abused for many years, so writing this one was very cathartic as I finally got to punish my own abuser, something I’m not allowed to do in real life.
I’m a typical pantser, working on books three and four in the series at the moment (too many ideas for just one book!), and I’m also working on a couple of standalones, which may become series, depending on what readers think.
I’ve had short stories published in two charity anthologies produced by ‘Crime & Publishment’; a crime-writing workshop run by author and hotelier Graham Smith, at The Mill Forge Hotel in Gretna Green. This workshop is phenomenal, and has seen countless writers become published authors since it began.
When I’m not writing, I spend my time reading, playing computer games, or attending book festivals. Last year, I ran a creative writing class at a local school, along with fellow authors May Rinaldi and F.D. Quinn, and the children were incredible. They published an anthology to help raise money for their school, and some of them went on to win prizes at writing competitions. I’m about to embark on a writing class for a local women’s group.
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