My latest book of short stories and ballads – LUNATICS & CRIMINALS – is mainly for adults (available on Amazon for just £6.99, paperback, or £1.99 as an ebook. As the title suggests, the subjects include murder, robbery, corruption and other cheerful things. Here’s a taste:

                               I met her on the mountain, there I took her life,

Met her on the mountain, stabbed her with my knife.

Hang down your head Tom Dooley, hang down your head and cry.

Hang down you head Tom Dooley, poor boy you’re bound to die.*

I was sitting in a café trying to impress a girl by outlining plans to write a book on violent crime. ‘We may be the most successful species on Earth, but we’re also the most violent,’ I said. ‘Even our games – football, rugby, boxing, and so on – are often based on armed conflict and use the language of warfare. Why is this? Well, I have a few ideas.’

Leaning back, rather pleased with my pitch, I smiled smugly at the girl. This was, I should add, many years ago, before I’d attempted to write anything more taxing than a school essay and had little experience of life. I was, however, a fan of murder ballads such as Tom Dooley, Jesse James, Frankie and Johnny, and Delia’s Gone, to name but a few, and thought I knew a thing or two about mankind’s insatiable appetite for slaughter.

Then the café door crashed open and a wild-eyed youth rushed in, pulled another guy out of his seat, and began to punch and kick him. Customers sprang up, screaming, overturning tables and chairs, all in a panic to avoid the maniac.

Within seconds the victim was knocked to the floor and, as he lay bruised and bloodied, his assailant escaped leaving everyone trembling with shock.

I never discovered the cause of the fracas but did realise one important fact: singing or reading about violent acts was one thing – it could even be entertaining – but the reality was no joke. Even a Saturday night punch-up could be heart-stopping, possibly lethal, and something I surely didn’t understand or wish to get close-up to. So maybe I wasn’t yet ready to write a book on the subject.

But here I am, many decades later, attempting that very thing. Let’s hope I’m now up to the task.

The song lyrics (ballads) were mostly penned by me for singing in pubs and clubs. The stories written for various publications and are a mixture of fact and fiction. But all reflect the darker side of human nature, of which, unfortunately, there are many examples.

All characters’ names are fictional and any similarity to real people coincidental unless otherwise stated.

 *Traditional North Carolina ballad based on the true 1866 murder of Laura Foster in Wilkes County by Tom Dula (above) – pronounced locally as ‘Dooley’. A version by the Kingston Trio was a hit in 1958, but the song has been recorded by many other artists.