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Alan McDermott

Goodreads Author

Website

http://alanmcdermottbooks.co.uk/

Twitter

https://twitter.com/Jambalian

Genre

Mystery & Thrillers, Literature & Fiction, Thriller

Influences

Andy McNab, Chris Ryan ...more

Member Since

August 2011

URL

https://www.goodreads.com/jambalian

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Alan McDermott is a full time author from the south of England, married with beautiful twin daughters. He used to write critical applications for the NHS, but now he spends his days writing action thrillers.

His debut novel, Gray Justice, has been very well received and earned him membership of http://independentauthorsinternationa.... He was subsequently picked up by Thomas & Mercer, who published his first 10 books.

Alan's 7th novel Trojan was shortlisted for an ITW thriller award.

In March 2020 he release a new standalone called Motive, and the 7th Tom Gray will be released on June 4th 2020.

The reading order of Alan's books can be found at www.alanmcdermottbooks.co.uk

You can follow Alan on Twitter through his @Jambalian account and on Faceb ...more

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Popular Answered Questions

What are you currently working on?

Alan McDermott I'm coming to the end of the fifth Tom Gray thriller.…moreI'm coming to the end of the fifth Tom Gray thriller.(less)

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What mystery in your own life could be a plot for a book?

Alan McDermott I was writing a novel and I got an email from Goodreads asking me a question. I know I turned those question things off a long time ago. There was two…moreI was writing a novel and I got an email from Goodreads asking me a question. I know I turned those question things off a long time ago. There was two reasons for doing so, the first being that very few people have heard of me, and even fewer would be interested in anything going on in my life. The second reason was that it ate into my writing time.
The fact that I was still getting questions thrown at me, not from readers, but from Goodreads—the actual website that knows I don’t want to be answering banal questions—made me realise that it wasn’t going to stop. I’d already turned the feature off, what more could I do?
So I wrote a snarky reply to said question.
Little did I know, but I was about to unleash hell!
One of my very few fans on Goodreads read my answer and thought it hilarious, so they shared it on social media. Within hours it was trending on Facebook and Twitter, with hundreds of thousands of likes. Seems like a good thing, doesn’t it? Lots of exposure, suddenly people know who I am, sales start to increase…
You couldn’t be more wrong.
One of the head honchos at Goodreads sees my reply and realises that they’ve broken some sort of data protection rule, which could prove expensive. So, they sack the person responsible for sending me the question.
That’s where the fun begins.
Her name was Charlotte, and she now has a huge hard on for me. She loved her job, but I brought her whole world crashing down with just a few light-hearted paragraphs. While I’m seeing enough sales in one day to afford that refurbished iPhone I had my eye on, Charlotte is down the Job Centre trying to get her head around a Universal Credit application form.
As she’s filling it out, he hand grips the pen so tightly it rips the paper. She has to queue and ask for another application form, which does her temper no good at all. She’s pissed at me, and while she’s queuing, she gets on her phone and does a search for me. Idiot that I am, I gave my real home town on one of my social media profiles, so she’s narrowed it down already. Being a smart girl, it doesn’t take her long to figure out a plan.
That night, she contacts me on Facebook. She says she’s a big fan and would love to buy a signed copy of one of my books. I say, ‘Sure, great!’ So I get her address and send it to her, putting my return address on the back.
Bingo! Charlotte now knows where I live!
Weeks go by. My sales are back down to almost zilch, the Goodreads things already forgotten by all.
All except Charlotte.
She’s been plotting, planning, wondering how to repay me for my wicked act. Day after day she’s come up with scenarios, each one more brutal than the one before.
Two months after I posted my answer, Charlotte makes up her mind. She goes full-blown bunny-boiler on me. First, it’s scented love letters addressed to me. Then it’s cleverly photoshopped pictures of me with another woman, addressed to the lady of the house.
You can imagine the result. Within days, my wife had moved out, taking the kids with her. I was left in a pit of despair, but Charlotte wasn’t finished yet.
I hit the bottle. Hard. Every day, every night. It got to the stage where I was never sober; I didn’t stop drinking enough to reach any level of sobriety. During this time, I staggered to the local shop in search of more booze, and when I returned home I gave Charlotte the perfect helping hand.
I left the key in the door.
Charlotte had been watching my house for days, waiting for the right moment to strike.
I’d just given her the perfect opportunity.
Charlotte took the key and made a copy first thing the next morning. By the time I stumbled out of bed at lunchtime, she’d put it back in the door where I left it. I found it the next day, on yet another booze run.
Things started to get weird after that. I would wake in the morning to find furniture had been moved around. The sofa was up against the wrong wall. My sideboard was in the hallway. The vacuum cleaner was in the garden!
But the worst part was the notes written in a drunken scrawl. They looked nothing like my handwriting, but then they wouldn’t, would they? They were written by drunken me, not sober me.
Kill yourself!
End it now!
Everybody hates you!
The theme was always the same, and it began to sink in. I would hit the bottle again, staring at the notes, wondering what Drunk Alan knew that Sober Alan didn’t. Your life has turned to shit, that’s what! There’s no point going on!
It wasn’t until three days later that Donny came round. He’s my next door neighbour, and he was worried about me. I told him about the break up, which wasn’t my fault. There was no other woman, I told him.
‘No? Who’s been entering your house for the last few days?’ he asked. ‘Always late, usually after midnight.’
I assured him that he was the first person to visit me in weeks, but he gave me a look that said he found it hard to believe.
Could it be true? Was someone coming into my house when I was wallowing in a drunken sleep? There was only one way to find out.
I stayed off the booze all day, and at ten I turned off all the lights and sat on the bottom step, staring at the front door.
Minutes passed. Hours. Then, the sound of a key being forced slowly into the lock.
I should have a weapon! I chastised myself. You’re an author! You didn’t think to arm yourself?? Would you let one of your characters sit here with nothing but a raging hangover??
It was too late to do anything about it now.
The door creaked open and the first thing I saw was the blade of a knife. It must have been twelve inches long, and was being held by a woman I’d never seen before.
‘We meet at last,’ she said, an evil grin creeping across her face.
‘Who the hell are you?’ I asked, backing up the stairs as she took measured steps towards me.
‘I’m the woman whose life you destroyed.’
‘What?’ I bumbled. ‘How?’
‘The Goodreads question,’ she said. ‘If you’d just ignored it, none of this would have happened. Your wife would still be here. You’d still be writing. But, no, you had to go and mention the fact that you turned the questions off, and it cost me everything!’
Writing! That’s it! I’m the author! I control the characters; they don’t control me!
So I backspaced everything I’d written and looked at the question again:

What mystery in your own life could be a plot for a book?

I thought about it for a moment, then simply wrote:

None.
(less)

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Combine Editions
Alan McDermott’s books

Average rating: 4.2 · 56,137 ratings · 2,023 reviews · 31 distinct works • Similar authors

	Gray Justice (Tom Gray, #1) 3.90 avg rating — 9,649 ratings — published 2011 — 24 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Run and Hide (Eva Driscoll #1) 4.30 avg rating — 8,348 ratings — published 2018 — 9 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Gray Resurrection (Tom Gray, #2) really liked it 4.00 avg rating — 5,059 ratings — published 2012 — 18 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Gray Redemption (Tom Gray, #3) 4.15 avg rating — 4,758 ratings — published 2012 — 13 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Seek and Destroy (Eva Driscoll #2) 4.39 avg rating — 3,682 ratings — published 2018 — 6 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Gray Salvation (Tom Gray, #6) 4.36 avg rating — 3,652 ratings — published 2016 — 9 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Gray Retribution (Tom Gray, #4) 4.21 avg rating — 3,654 ratings — published 2014 — 10 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Trojan (Andrew Harvey, #1) 4.26 avg rating — 3,490 ratings — published 2017 — 9 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Gray Vengeance (Tom Gray, #5) 4.36 avg rating — 3,243 ratings — published 2015 — 10 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Fight To Survive (Eva Driscoll #3) 4.41 avg rating — 2,791 ratings — published 2019 — 9 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

More books by Alan McDermott…

69 posts
Alan McDermott's Blog

It's been a while...

Apologies for not being around for the last 18 months or so. Life got in the way and there wasn’t much to report. As a quick update, I’ve been off the cigs for two and a half years, only had one drink so far this year, and lost 14 kilos in weight thanks to my new diet and exercise routine.

I’ve also released two new books, Seek and Destroy and Fight to Survive, and put another book up fo Read more of this blog post »

View more on Alan McDermott's website »

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Published on March 20, 2020 10:07

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Series by Alan McDermott

Tom Gray (6 books)
by

Alan McDermott (Goodreads Author)

4.10 avg rating — 30,060 ratings

Eva Driscoll (7 books)
by

Alan McDermott (Goodreads Author)

4.38 avg rating — 17,166 ratings

Andrew Harvey (1 book)
by

Alan McDermott (Goodreads Author)

4.26 avg rating — 3,490 ratings

Quotes by Alan McDermott (?)

“It’s Walking with Shadows by Luke Romyn. A famous fiction”
― Alan McDermott, Run and Hide

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“scorcher of a day. The temperature had reached and then exceeded the forecast 98 degrees, and even for Rees Colback, who’d grown up in Florida and served in some of the hottest hellholes imaginable, it had made for an uncomfortable day. It was his first visit to the Big Apple. He’d followed the obligatory tourist trail, paying more than fifty bucks to take in the view from the top of the Empire State Building, then walking to Times Square for more pictures before having a sandwich in Central Park. As the evening wore on, his appetite had grown and he was heading down Fifth Avenue to an eatery his closest friend had recommended. Pricey,”
― Alan McDermott, Run and Hide

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“they reacted like jelly, and he smashed into the door nose first, leaving a trail of blood as he slid to the floor. Farsi pulled out a pair of plasticuffs and secured the prisoner’s hands and feet, then dragged him onto a sofa. Two members of the team began”
― Alan McDermott, Gray Redemption

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See all Alan McDermott's quotes »

Topics Mentioning This Author

topics	posts	views	last activity
The Seasonal Read...: Fall Challenge 2012: Reading Plans	58	342	Nov 23, 2012 08:20PM
The Seasonal Read...: Completed Tasks (Do Not Delete Posts)	2519	652	Aug 01, 2014 02:12PM
Cozy Mysteries : Mystery ABC's, Round 2	12168	1134	Mar 21, 2016 12:30PM
UK Book Club: Tania's UK Counties Challenge	34	136	Feb 23, 2019 05:39AM

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Alan’s Quotes

“When I grow old I want to regret the things I've done, not the things I haven't done.”
― Youngblood Hawke

12 likes

Alan’s Friend Comments

Comments (showing 1-26) post a comment »

date

newest »

message 26: by Rick

Jul 26, 2016 06:51AM

Hi Alan,

Thanks for adding me as a friend. Greatly appreciated and I'm now following you here.

Rick

reply | flag

message 25: by Terry

Jul 06, 2014 04:29AM

Thank you for befriending me!

reply | flag

message 24: by Beth

Jan 24, 2014 07:19AM

Thanks for being my friend. -b-

reply | flag

message 23: by Alan

Dec 16, 2013 12:47PM

Chad wrote: "Alan, thanx for accepting my friend request :)"

My pleasure :-)

reply | flag

message 22: by Sandra

May 21, 2013 09:22PM

Thanks for friending me! :)

reply | flag

message 21: by Charlotte

Feb 21, 2013 08:50PM

How wonderful that you've found your muse, Alan. Thank you for your friendship.

Charlotte M. Liebel, Author (Facebook)
Twitter @Sharliebel

reply | flag

message 20: by Alan

Feb 21, 2013 01:22PM

You, too :-)

reply | flag

message 19: by Angela

Feb 21, 2013 12:56PM

Thanks for the friend invitation, good to meet you!
Angela

reply | flag

message 18: by Carole

Feb 21, 2013 01:43AM

Well, hi Alan!
Good to see you here.

reply | flag

message 17: by Owen

Jan 31, 2013 01:10AM

Hi Alan,

I hope you're well.

Thanks for accepting my request to be friends.

All the best,
Owen

http://behind-the-smile.org

reply | flag

message 16: by Alan

Oct 14, 2012 11:13AM

W.H. wrote: "Hi Alan

I'd love to take part in your super event but I'm very heavily committed at present to a biog of a still active East End/Essex gangster. He's asked me to do it and I'm working at it very h..."

LOL, rather you than me! Still, if you have a spare moment, check out those free books. There might be one or two you fancy :-)

reply | flag

message 15: by W.H.

Oct 14, 2012 11:01AM

Hi Alan

I'd love to take part in your super event but I'm very heavily committed at present to a biog of a still active East End/Essex gangster. He's asked me to do it and I'm working at it very hard as I wish not to be knee-capped or worse. But best of luck. WH (Eastbourne)

reply | flag

message 14: by Alan

Aug 04, 2012 12:44PM

Victoria wrote: "HEY! currently reading Gray Justice and really enjoying it :) you are a great writer :)"

So glad you're enjoying it, Victoria! I don't know about great writer, I just aim to entertain :-)

reply | flag

message 13: by Victoria

Aug 04, 2012 12:23PM

HEY! currently reading Gray Justice and really enjoying it :) you are a great writer :)

reply | flag

message 12: by Alan

Aug 01, 2012 08:42AM

Ah, not too far away at all :-)

reply | flag

message 11: by Andrew

Aug 01, 2012 08:11AM

Alan wrote: "Hi Andrew,

Good to meet you. Whereabouts do you live?

Alan"

Hi Alan,

I am in Pulbourough

Andrew

reply | flag

message 10: by Alan

Aug 01, 2012 08:00AM

Hi Andrew,

Good to meet you. Whereabouts do you live?

Alan

reply | flag

message 9: by Andrew (last edited Aug 01, 2012 08:09AM)

Aug 01, 2012 07:54AM

Hi Alan,

I am still very new to Goodreads and thank you for accepting my friend request.

I think live not far from me...spooky I know...

Regards
Andrew

reply | flag

message 8: by Alan

Jul 14, 2012 02:00PM

Becca wrote: "Thanks for the friendship, Alan. Happy reading and writing! :)"

You too, Becca :-)

reply | flag

message 7: by Alan

Jul 14, 2012 02:00PM

Amy wrote: "Thanks for adding me as a friend, Alan! I see your tweets on Twitter all the time. I'm so geeked that I can follow you here too."

The pleasure is all mine :-)

reply | flag

message 6: by Amy

Jul 14, 2012 01:20PM

Thanks for adding me as a friend, Alan! I see your tweets on Twitter all the time. I'm so geeked that I can follow you here too.

reply | flag

message 5: by Becca

Jul 12, 2012 11:38AM

Thanks for the friendship, Alan. Happy reading and writing! :)

reply | flag

message 4: by Savannah

Mar 21, 2012 06:43AM

Alan, thank you for the friendship. If you have time and would love to read a sexy new read I have a free story now out called Lovers Moan http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/...

Stay naughty,
Savannah

reply | flag

message 3: by David

Mar 11, 2012 11:58AM