Tom Bale, in his second thriller, Skin and Bones, wastes no time jumping right into the horrifying story.  Bale says, "The entire opening sequence, where Julia gets caught up in a shooting spree and chased by the killer, came from an incredibly vivid dream. As for her profession, I saw her as an ordinary woman thrown into an extraordinary situation, but she also had to be a tough, resilient character.  I have two young children, and when I help out on their school trips I'm always amazed by the enormous reserves of energy and patience that teachers possess. I thought those qualities would be perfect for Julia."

This might be Bale's second thriller with Preface Publishing, but it's not the first thing he's written. He's been writing since he was seven-years-old.  When the rest of us wanted to be sports heroes, Bale was writing comic strips.  "I have no recollection of ever wanting to be an astronaut, a train driver or anything like that. I just remember that I always loved drawing, well before I could read or write, and my first real ambition was to create my own comic books. I harboured that dream until my early teens, when it dawned on me that my artwork never quite lived up to the image I had in my head. By contrast, when I turned those images into words on the page, the result was a lot more satisfying."

And Bale might be a Brit, but don't expect a cozy Agatha Cristie novel. "Perhaps it was too many Agatha Christie adaptations on TV, but when I started reading it, British crime fiction still had quite a strong association with the 'country vicarage and drawing room' type of story - slightly quaint, centered on puzzles rather than character, and not terribly realistic or reflective of modern society.

At that time, American fiction seemed much more real, brutal and exciting.  Ever since my youth, when I became a huge admirer (and very poor imitator) of Ernest Hemingway, I've had a particular affection for the kind of spare, muscular prose that American writers do better than anyone else. When I pick up a book by Pete Dexter, or Elmore Leonard, or Carl Hiassen, I know I'm going to read the sort of perfectly weighted sentences that will leave me both awestruck and sick with envy.

In fact, one of the great pleasures of writing Skin and Bones was taking that archetypal English village setting and subjecting it to "urban" levels of violence and mayhem."

Tom Bale has worked as a retail assistant, claims negotiator, office manager, business analyst, freelance consultant and househusband. He now writes full-time and lives with his family in Brighton. For more information, visit his website at www.tombale.net.

Contributing editor Mark Combes is an avid sailor and Scuba diver and travels extensively in the Caribbean pursuing his passions. He works in book publishing and RUNNING WRECKED is his first novel.