Peter James

My day starts back to front to most people in that my creative day starts at six o’clock in the evening when I pour myself a massive vodka martini with four olives, that’s my ritual. 

I clock in, it’s a psychological thing and I write til about ten o’clock at night, then I switch off, have supper in front of the telly, then in the morning I go for a run about half past six and then after that about nine o’clock I revise what I wrote the night before and plan my next day’s writing, and I try to always write a chapter a day so I can go to sleep thinking about the next chapter. 

This house has a history going back to the 12th century. When we first moved in here we in fact got more than we bargained for. My partner’s mother was over from Sweden and she asked if we allowed our neighbours to walk through the grounds, and when I said “no”, she said that’s odd she’d just seen nine people all dressed in strange costume walking through the courtyard, and I was then working in a, in a study downstairs and I couldn’t focus and I was trying to write a novel… couldn’t get it to happen, and we bought in a ghost buster for want of a better word, and he went around the house dowsing and he said no wonder I couldn’t work in my office, I was actually over the grave of a soldier who was very angry. 

I decided not to argue with a, with a 800 years dead soldier, so I in fact built this extension on to the house, and, and made this my office. 

I love this room because it gives me the space to display some of the memorabilia that I collect, I’m a bit of an obsessive collector, particularly of anything to do with the Police, both here in this country and abroad.

I love gadgets and, and the clocking in is a bit of fun, it comes from an old factory belonging to my family where we used to make the Queen’s gloves, and then I had this wonderful Russian Afghan soldier’s helmet given to me by the Chief of Police of Central Moscow, it weighs a staggering 25 pounds. 

I was told that he collects British Police memorabilia and I took him a Bobby’s helmet and in return he gave me this and a rather fine bottle of vodka! 

My Dutch publisher has a wonderfully macabre sense of humour. This is the jacket cover for my novel ‘Dead Simple’ in Dutch and for my last birthday he gave me a little present. 

He put me in it!  And I love the wording.  “Take the lid off and enjoy the rest of your life”. 
 
I spend a lot of time out with Sussex Police and they’re always playing pranks on me, one time I was parked at the Traffic Police Headquarters and they stuck a big banner across my car saying “Seized by Sussex Police” and when my new book came out this summer they actually put this Wanted poster up in their Police Stations with my picture on it. 

Of course living in a haunted house when I, when I knock off for the night I always leave my computer switched on in the hope that maybe I’ll come along in the morning and find that the ghosts have actually kindly finished my new novel for me, but so far it hasn’t happened.