Stephen Marson
I was born in Woking in 1959 and now live in Devon with my partner and our black lab. I was encouraged to write from an early age when I wrote a short story in high school and was advised to enter the story into a competition. Unfortunately, I chose to ignore the advice and have regretted it ever since.

Since then, I’ve been a butcher, a telephone engineer and finally a web designer. Being a web designer is the only occupation that helps me with my writing, specifically the actual writing but also the marketing aspect. The butcher job might come in handy with any future murder plots, I suppose.

I have had a story idea in my head for a while, and when I finally had a chance to start writing, two things happened. Firstly, I came across a newspaper report from the 1900s, about a tram that crashed in my home town, killing a passenger.

The other thing that happened was when I was researching my family history; upon opening an old metal chest I found a pile of cards sent between family members back in 1900 or so. One of my relatives wrote about her first time on an omnibus; an unusual sight in those days. Her name was Carrie and a story started to form itself in my head.

THE GIRL ON THE TRAM was born, and the heroine had to be Carrie of course…