A Liverpool man left his job to become a full-time crime writer.
Bestselling author David Jackson, originally from Fairfield, made the "nerve-racking" decision to leave his University of Liverpool lecturing job at the end of 2020 when everything he loved about face-to-face teaching went out of the window during the coronavirus pandemic. Frustrated by what he said was the lack of creativity in "very objective, very detached" academic writing, the dad-of-two started writing short stories two decades ago.
The computer science lecturer was "over the moon" when his first novel, in 2011, was highly commended in the Crime Writers' Association's Debut Dagger award category, opening David up to the world of agents and publishers. He said: "Success still wasn't immediate. It was still a long, hard battle after that, but it gave me a boost to go ahead and finish the novel and then get it out to these agents."
