The most successful book I never published

The book in my bottom drawer is a reminder to rethink the idea of failure

Back in 2006 I was a frustrated, unpublished novelist, working as a freelance book editor to earn my living. I had written about 20,000 words of two stand-alone suspense novels, but I was always getting stuck: writing myself into corners, losing the impetus of the plot, and spending a long time constructing beautifully crafted sentences that didn’t fit …