Writing Trader Bob was a two-year process for the author, Vince Hawkins. Do all authors find that the first novel takes longer than ones that follow – as Vince hopes? Surely, the self-inflicted learning curve of the debut fiction must pay dividends later?
There were the times when he didn’t know what should happen next. The best plan, he eventually found out, was to step away, and let the ideas come over the next couple of days. Meanwhile, why not do something pleasurable and diverting?
For the author, taking the easy way out and inserting an autobiographical episode proved to be a poisonous trap. Most often it had to be excised and something imaginary put in its place, thus upsetting a whole chain of events that had to be abandoned and a new course set in their stead.
From an early stage, though, this author knew roughly how the ending would pan out. First he wrote the beginning and the end, the easy parts, and then filled in the middle. This was the tortuous section. How to make it meaningful and interesting when one knew where it led?
This author, perhaps it is the same for all authors, determined that locations would mainly be ones he knew. Therefore, when the anti-hero disappeared after perpetrating his crime, what a coincidence that he decided to hide in places where the author himself had travelled. Vince began travelling when he became a self-employed editor of business reports and writer for trade magazines after renouncing the demon drink. His best client put him on a monthly retainer so that he was paid whether they sent any work or not. It gave rise to resentment about being sent work, following a fallow month. Other clients were more stingy and insisted on paying on a piecework basis.
Nevertheless these arrangements led to Vince’s realization that, thanks to the internet, he could travel anywhere in the world with his laptop while he was working.
With a financial career in the background, it was another coincidence waiting to happen that the crime in the ‘banking crime thriller’ sandwich would be a bank robbery or fraud of some description.

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A final word about marketing: publishing on Amazon leaves marketing in the hands of the author. The crime in this book was so brilliant that he didn’t know whether to finish the book or do the crime himself. But anyone reading the story might become a copycat, so the author is sending the book with a warning to the world’s leading financial institutions. Then he intends to tell the national press in various countries what he has done. If this plan achieves no publicity, dear reader, you may think it likely that someone, somewhere is giving it a go …