Author profile: Tom Bale
Ordinary people being caught up in terrifying situations are what give the thriller writer’s work its edge, he tells Margaret James
Sussex-based thriller writer Tom Bale’s latest novel is a story about extraordinary things happening to ordinary people like you and me.
It’s full of ingeniously terrifying twists and is the kind of fiction I tend to read in the middle of the day when plenty of other people are around, rather than when it’s dark or I am alone in the house.
Many of the authors interviewed for this feature slot in Writing Magazine come from artistic or creative backgrounds. Tom says there is no real tradition of writing in his own family, but this didn’t stop him drawing comic strips while he was still very young, and by the time he was seven he’d realised there were people whose job was to write stories. He was desperate to be one of them.
What drew him to writing thrillers? ‘I’ve always thought of science fiction and horror as my first loves,’ he says. ‘But from a very early age I was also devoted to the Tintin stories, and what are they if not wonderful, escapist thrillers?