About

Engineer by day, writer by night.

In my day job, I’ve turned rock into fertilizer, recycled solvents, recovered precious metals, brought medicines to market, made amazing new polymers, demolished factories and directed international construction projects.

Photo © Gary Walsh

I’ve written about my first job in a Leith Fertiliser factory in Phosphate Rocks: A Death In Ten Objects. It’s available to order from Sandstone Press here

Up until early 2020, work meant travel, and I never left home without a book or twelve.  I love a good thriller, but the lack of believable women heroes is infuriating.  Why aren’t they out there, solving mysteries and saving the world?  Where is the female Bourne, Reacher, MacGuyver or Bond?

Well, I got sick of wondering and hoping, and decided to write the stories that I wanted to read.

Allow me to flip my hard hat, kick off my work boots and introduce you to Jaq Silver, a whizz with explosives, using her brain where others use brawn, blowing things up to keep people safe.

You’ll find her in action in The Chemical Detective, The Chemical Reaction and The Chemical Cocktail, published by Point Blank books (Oneworld), available from all good bookshops and on-line here.

Fiona Erskine