Divorcing Jack

This is the book that started it all, written in 1992 but not published until three years later. It`s the story of Dan Starkey, a Belfast journalist who hasn`t quite grown up, and how he jeopardizes his marriage and his country by getting very drunk and snogging a young lady who isn`t his wife, but who is the daughter of a prominent politician.

DJ was written in my spare time after working by day as a journalist on the Co.Down Spectator. I had no great hope for it when I finished it, and this was confirmed when the manuscript was very quickly turned down by several local publishers, and then by practically every agent in London.

Enter my girlfriend who I finally allowed to read it – and she insisted on me sending it to the biggest publisher I could think of.

It duly went into the slush pile at HarperCollins where one fine day some underpaid and under-appreciated young student found it and recommended it up the line, the first time anyone had found anything apart from dust in the slush pile for many years.

And the rest, as they say, is quite boring.