I never set out to write Peeling Apples. It started in a classroom, under the same constraints my students face in their GCSE English exams—650 words, first person, present tense, written in under an hour. I teach in Bootle, one of the most socially and economically deprived areas in the UK. My students have barriers to learning that many wouldn’t believe. I tell them to write about themselves because they know themselves better than anyone, right? But I wanted to know what it actually felt like to attempt what I was asking of them. So, I sat down and did it myself.
And, fuck me, was it a challenge.
I know how to write. I know what an exam board wants. But what I didn’t know was how brutal it would be to squeeze something true—something that actually meant something—into such a tight space. What I ended up with that day wasn’t finished, but it had weight. It had blood in it. I couldn’t leave it there. That’s how Peeling Apples was born.
A Story That Knows Its Roots
This book is personal. It’s fictionalised, but only just. Some names were changed, some people were softened or sharpened, but the bones of it? They’re real. My granddad was the hardest to write—I barely remember him. He died when I was 14, so I had to build him from scraps of memory and inherited stories. Mrs. Joyce? She’s a character, but she’s also real. She lived next door to my Nana. We ate stewed apples together. We watched wrestling after school. Her house is exactly as I remember it.
Southport—the town where Peeling Apples is set—was a place where time moved slow. Dead, but not dead-dead. Stagnant. A town still clinging to the faded grandeur of its Victorian past while Liverpool, just down the road, was always becoming something. That contrast wasn’t something I consciously wove into the book, but it’s there, embedded in the atmosphere. Martyn, the protagonist, sees the world much as I did. The voice I gave him? That’s the voice I wish I’d had. It’s raw. It’s real. It doesn’t dress itself up to please anyone.
Fucking with Form
Structurally, Peeling Apples doesn’t behave. It’s not clean-cut. It doesn’t hold your hand. It plays with and then instead of therefore at the end of each beat. A beta reader questioned the pacing, and I made some tweaks—small transitions between vignettes, at the press’s request—but the core of it had to stay unpolished. I’ve read a lot of short fiction that moves in snapshots—writers like Kerouac, Bennett, Barstow, Burgess. Peeling Apples isn’t quite stream of consciousness, but if Alan Bennett ever wrote in that style, it might look something like this.
Publishing: When It Got Real
This book means something to me because it’s my first substantial piece of prose. I’ve been a poet for years, but I want to tell stories too. And fuck, it feels good.
The process, though? Surreal. When Suzanne Craig-Whitock at Dark Winter Lit offered me a contract, I had to negotiate ownership of the characters. As in, just in case this gets adapted for TV or film. That was the moment it felt real. I’ve had books and poems published before, but this was different. This wasn’t just words on a page—this was a story.
The Cover: Peeling Back Time
The cover was non-negotiable. I was lucky—Dark Winter Lit trusted me completely. I’ve been promised creative control on covers before, only to have it yanked away at the last minute, and that’s always pissed me off. Not this time.
The design? Inspired by The Beatles Anthology album covers—layered, fragmented, peeling back time. The images? They’re motifs from the book. The torn-paper effect is a scrapbook, a memory pieced together, a life peeled back layer by layer.
What I Want Readers to Take From This
I want readers to rethink what intergenerational relationships really look like. I want them to feel something sharp and immediate. I want them to be challenged—to read something that doesn’t fit inside a neat, familiar structure and be excited by that.
More than anything, I want them to understand me. To see my range. To see what I can do outside of poetry.
And After Peeling Apples?
I don’t know. I’ve got short stories in me. A teleplay that may or may not ever happen. More poetry. I write what feels urgent. I’ll slow down on editing at some point and focus more on getting my own work out there.
For now, though, this is it.
Peeling Apples is a quiet, slow-burn coming-of-age story about a boy’s first brush with loss, the small acts of love that shape us, and the grief that lingers in the silences between words.
It’s real. It’s mine. And soon, it’ll be yours too.
Want to Read Peeling Apples?
Keep an eye on Dark Winter Lit—release details coming soon.
