Peter Boland

After studying to be an architect, Peter Boland realised he wasn't very good at it. He liked designing buildings he just couldn't make them stand up, which is a bit of a handicap in an industry that likes to keep things upright. So he switched to advertising, writing ads for everything from cruise lines to zombie video games.

After meeting his wife Shalini and having two awesome children (their words), he was amazed when she sat and actually wrote a book. Then another and another. They were good too. Really good. So he thought, I'll have a go at that.

He soon realised there's no magic formula. You just have to put one word in front of the other (and keep doing that for about a year). It also helps if you can resist the lure of surfing, playing Nintendo Switch with his son, watching America's Next Top Model with his daughter and drinking beer in a garden chair.