Writing success for alumnus

He left and taught French at Hardye’s School in Dorchester, Dorset but a chance enquiry about a post at the University led to an exchange of letters with his Exeter Professor, Robert Niklaus, and the opportunity to start a PhD. By then, he was married with a young family, so undertook the research part-time. He spent six months as an assistant in the French department before another chance encounter led to him being offered a post as lecturer at the University of Aberdeen, where he stayed until taking early retirement to concentrate on his writing.

Bill wrote training and safety programmes, mainly for companies in the oil and gas industry and was a presenter on Grampian Television and voice-over artist for radio and television. The BBC had already broadcast several of his plays and, as a direct result of writing revues which he and his second wife performed at the Edinburgh Festival, he was invited to the University of Rhode Island as visiting artist and visiting Professor. They also commissioned him to translate for performance three plays by Molière, one of which won a British Comparative Literature Association prize.

His novels have also won awards. A spoof crime novel, The Sparrow Conundrum, was the winner of the ‘Humor’ category of the Forward National Literature Awards 2011 while his crime novel, The Darkness, won silver in the ‘Mystery’ category.

The Darkness is the 3rd in his crime series featuring Detective Chief Inspector Jack Carston. There are five so far but Bill explained: “The next one will probably be the last because the character’s thinking of having a mid-life crisis and anyway, since The Darkness, he’s not been very sure of his own morality.”

Bill insists that speaking of his characters as if they’re real is normal.
“You hear it from most writers,” he said. “Characters do take over, go their own ways, and you just have to follow them. My historical novel, The Figurehead, started out as a crime novel, set in Aberdeen in 1840, but the central female character turned out to be such a strong personality that she took over and turned it into a romance as well.”

He’s always written but traces his real involvement back to his days at Exeter.
“There were two lecturers in particular,’ he said, “One in the English department and one in the French department. The way they analysed texts and showed the sort of things that were going on beneath the surface was a revelation to me. I owe them an awful lot.”

Bill was also one of the first of the Royal Literary Fund’s Writing Fellows in Scotland at the Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen, Dundee University and St Andrews. This led to commissions from Pearson Education to write four ‘How-to’ books in their ‘Brilliant’ series, on study skills, essay and dissertation writing, and workplace skills.

He also writes children’s stories but at present, he’s working on a sequel to The Figurehead.

His latest book, Unsafe Acts, was published in February.

Full list of Bill Kirton’s books:

Novels:
UNSAFE ACTS (February 2012)
SHADOW SELVES (October 2011)
THE DARKNESS (July 2011)
THE SPARROW CONUNDRUM (March 2011)
THE FIGUREHEAD (June 2010)
ROUGH JUSTICE (2008)
MATERIAL EVIDENCE (2007)


How-to books:
BRILLIANT WORKPLACE SKILLS FOR STUDENTS AND GRADUATES (October 2011)
BRILLIANT DISSERTATION (January 2011)
BRILLIANT ESSAY (December 2010)
BRILLIANT STUDY SKILLS (2010)
JUST WRITE (2007)


As Jack Lefebre:
ALTERNATIVE DIMENSION (January 2012)


As Jack Rosse:
THE LOCH EWE MYSTERY (March 2011)