I was brought up in a small Borders village, quit school at sixteen and hitchhiked down to London. A brief period of life on the streets, (see my recent novel So Many Lives and All of Them Are Yours, 2023) came to an end when I secured the positions of valet-footman (see Billionaires’ Banquet, 2017), then barnacle scraper on Thames barges, labourer, barman, computer operator and city messenger. Becoming an associate member of a short-lived pop group started me writing song lyrics. My longest-ever job, a model for art students, allowed me to sit (usually more or less naked) and do nothing for hours, leaving my imagination completely free. My earliest published poems date from this period.

Later, while living off and on in Paris, in the hills above Barcelona and a commune in the Australian outback (see Belonging, 2006), I began writing fiction. My first novel, The Sound of My Voice (winner of the Prix Mille Pages 2004 and Prix Lucioles 2005, both for Best Foreign Novel) was published in 1987.

For the last thirty years, my marriage to the writer and poet Regi Claire has brought stability to my life — and about time too! We live in Edinburgh (the setting for Ghost Moon, nominated for the International Impac Dublin Literary Award 2016). I love the music and magic of words and am as excited now to begin writing every morning as when I first started. I also teach a course in Music Appreciation at the University of Edinburgh.