Philip Palmer

I started writing when I was 14 and wrote a short story for the school magazine about a bank robber who is killed during a heist and goes to Heaven - can't get through the Pearly Gates, and has to break in. Nicely synthesising all the genres I still love to mash up...

When I came to London from University I started writing and combined that with working for theatres and TV and film companies as a script reader. I worked at the Royal Court for a while, which taught me so much. And then I became a 'telly writer' and script editor.

Now I am writing novels that are big and epic and draw on all the parts of my life, and of me. HELL ON EARTH may be a surprise to readers who know my previous books - it's not SF, for starters. But there's still humour, I hope. And mystery, and danger. And a host of quirky and interesting characters, only some of them alive.