LITMIR.BIZ

      STEVE WILSON says: I’m a late-starter as far as writing goes, with my first fantasy novel started in 2000, although it did stem from an idea that I’d been mulling over for some ten years. That novel eventually became a trilogy, but my writing was sporadic during the next few years.

      In 2004, I attained a Post Graduate Certificate in Creative Writing, and not long afterwards, I joined a local writing group, where I found being amongst like-minded peers of great benefit. In 2011 — after writing predominantly short stories for several years — I registered for the National Novel Writing Month, NaNoWriMo, with the aim of writing a 50,000 word novel in thirty days, and the end result of that was my first published novel, Who Wants To Live Forever?.

      I took part in NaNoWriMo again in 2012, writing a sword-and-sorcery fantasy novel set on a world with two suns, but in 2013 I went back to crime writing, which is how The Element of Death came into being. I have always enjoyed trying to solve puzzles, either in books or on screen, and I wanted to pay my own homage to writers such as Conan Doyle in this novel by devising the various coded messages that are left behind at the crime scenes.