LITMIR.BIZ

       NEAL DORAN

      grew up in London, and the only real childhood hardship he knew was not being able to get a bedroom door sign with his name spelled properly on it. He knew he’d rather be a writer than an astronaut from the time he realised he didn’t want a job that required too much travel. He has been an editor for spoof news website Newsbiscuit, written some jokes for BBC radio, and spent a short time as Britain’s most unlikely private investigator.

      Neal now lives on the southwest coast of Ireland with his wife and two sons, who still prefer their mum’s stories to his.

      He can be found on Twitter, usually when he’s not supposed to be, as @nealdoran.

      Thanks to Mum and Dad, David and the much-missed Carol for not being anything like the parents and in-laws in this book. Thanks also to Mark & Liz for sharing their experience of ‘sharing’; Richard for knowing where I need to raise my game, and to Darren for getting locked out once; wise authors Mark Dawson and Matt Dunn; Miranda Dickinson for a year of marvellous mentoring; Kirsty Greenwood for putting an early version of the start of this story in the Novelicious Undiscovered final; Kathryn, Lucy and Victoria and all the team at HQ Digital for making this happen; and to Gavin Ames, because I forgot about him last time.

      Finally, thanks to Jo for making life better than I ever could have expected, and Thomas and Noah for patiently waiting while dad wrote another book about kissing and stuff, rather than dinosaurs or zombies.