NEW AUTHOR PROFILE
NEIL ALEXANDER
The debut author tells Adrian Magson how redundancy and rejections only made him more determined to get published
Adrian Magson
Some stories take a long time to get out onto the paper. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing. If we take Neil Alexanders’s example, then 15 years was what it took – and that has paid of handsomely with The Vanishing of Margaret Small (Bonnier/ Embla Books), published in November.
A part-time teacher from Whitstable in Kent, Neil’s laudable efforts have produced a historical mystery with a dual timeline. Margaret, 75, is a major Cilla Black fan who, shortly after the singer’s death, begins receiving sums of money signed ‘C’. She’s convinced it must be the late Cilla B – but how is that possible? To find out, she has to journey back in her memories almost 70 years, when she was ‘vanished’ to a long-stay institution for children with learning difficulties.