About Piers

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I was born in England but brought up in Luxembourg. In the 1970s, expat society was very insular, but my parents didn’t really take part in the British Ladies’ Club or cricket club – instead, they threw themselves into theatre. My mum directing, my dad acting, all of us watching rehearsals, standing in, carrying bits of set back and forth. As an expat kid you really don’t feel you belong anywhere, so I put down roots through books and plays.

It was a real shock coming back to England as an 18-year-old. Apparently not everyone was a character from the World War II of Battle Annual, the boarding schools of Jennings and Billy Bunter, or the world of PG Wodehouse. Worse, I was seen as some kind of exotic foreigner: going to university in York, I was put in a hygienic new building with Israelis, Palestinians and hunt saboteur mature students. Just over the road, people were throwing up all over their brutalist 1960s dorm rooms.

I studied Politics and originally thought I would end up as President-for-life of the entire world. Fortunately, I started meeting girls instead. Very fortunately, I met the most interesting woman I’ve ever known in my second year. Rebecca and I got married in York five years later, and we now live with a wonderful dog called Lulu in London.

I started writing a spy novel in my last year at university. It had a quite frankly brilliant premise, a skimpy plot… and anaemic characters. And then I decided I had to get A Proper Job.

I’m not against people doing proper jobs. There are plenty of smart, happy, successful people working in my companies, and I’m grateful to them. Quite a few are fellow shareholders now. But it can be painful just climbing up the corporate ladder – and I was an MD with fifty staff by the time I was 26 – when there’s something else you’ve always dreamed of doing.

So I quit my job at 30. Borrowed some money from my very supportive dad, banked a bonus, got on the phone and spent three gutswoopingly terrifying years building up a tradeshow about Wi-Fi. Then I sold it for a not very large amount of money so I could spend a year writing a novel (“I would rather starve than die without writing a book,” I told myself dramatically). It was a post-apocalyptic family drama (don’t ask), with half-decent characters, a clever premise and… no story. And then I ran out of money.

Finally, after a short stint in corporate life, we remortgaged the house, borrowed a dizzying amount of money and founded two businesses as well as starting work on The Bitter Trade. It took longer than I thought. It was harder than I thought. I got way more broke than I had ever considered possible. And it has been the best time of my life. Researching one of the most interesting periods in history (I wish I had been born in the 1660s sometimes); writing; working with my amazing business partners and advising some very cool companies as well.

I love the time travel aspects of writing: connecting across the ether with my protagonist Cal, being part of his world, sucking in the stink and mayhem of seventeenth century life. I like projecting myself into a time when all ideas were possible, when a commoner could replace a king, when great fortunes were made and lost in months. There’s something so peaceful and healing about lighting a candle, making a coffee and letting the words come.

I’ve made so many lovely connections through writing. Especially my mentor, editor and friend Sally O-J. And it’s such a privilege to share ideas and learn from my brilliant wife / best friend / muse / funbomb Rebecca Promitzer.

PS I used to hate dressing up. Now I think of it as high concept time travel.