We all need a good friend, someone to support and encourage but also someone who will be unflinching when the time comes to tell us that we need to reconsider our attitudes or what we are doing. For a writer, in the first instance, it may be a partner or a colleague who shares a passion for story-telling who will guide us but if that well-worn manuscript is to see the light of day as a book it will be a copy editor who provides the essential advice, even if it is hard to take.

An editor is an intelligent pair of eyes who can advise about matters like titles and jacket designs, and will question missing pieces regarding characters and plots; ensure continuity and work with an author to make the very best of the book. With my novel What Goes Around, I was doubly lucky: not only did I have my long-time friend Don

Blaney to help me from the very early days of my writing career, but I was incredibly fortunate that my publisher, BlackAmber Books, had acquired the services of Joan Deitch.

When I first met Joan, she had already been in the book trade for over 30 years and worked with many best-selling authors. It would take a very long time to list them all, so here are just a few:

Lynda La Plante (creator of Prime Suspect and Widows TV series) 

Jackie Collins (The World is Full of Married Men, Lady Boss) 

Colin Bateman (Divorcing Jack; Belfast Confidential) 

Martina Cole (The Take, The Jump) 

Paul Carson (Scalpel, Cold Steel)

James Patterson (Along Came a Spider, Kiss the Girls). 

It was a thrill and a confidence-builder to have someone of Joan’s calibre to not only really like my debut novel but also believe in its story. When Don set up his own publishing house several years later Joan was very supportive and researched some scenes set in London for my novel Love, Lies and Bleeding – as she had once done for James Patterson – and also imparted some invaluable advice for my fifth book Sleeping Dogs Lie which was published in 2007. But it was in the run-up to Don’s trial for possession of 220 rounds of an AK47 assault rifle that Joan showed how much integrity and courage she possessed. 

As well as visiting the bookstores of London to buy copies of What Goes Around, which was thankfully still in print nine years after its release, to bring to court, she volunteered to travel to Ireland and act as a witness for the defence. Before she took her place on the stand Joan had to furnish details about her career and her work with Don and me to Don’s defence team so they could prepare the line of questioning for her.

Here is a short extract of the statement she provided before giving evidence at Cork’s Central Criminal Court in November 2008:  WHAT GOES AROUND merited big sales – which it may yet achieve as it now has a cult following and would make an excellent movie. Collaborating with Don and Ralph Robb, writing under the pen name of Sylvester Young, was a very enjoyable experience. WHAT GOES AROUND is a classic of its genre, and various scenes in it remain profoundly memorable to me. Like the best works, you believe it is real, not fiction. It starts off as a deep, dark novel, and the layers of darkness get deeper and deeper until the shock ending. The bleak message in its pages is most definitely one of lost souls and wasted lives. Most thrillers have a short shelf-life, but this one is in print nearly ten years later. This is because of its powerful writing and relevance of life today. 

Although my novel never achieved the sales Joan thought it merited, and it was never optioned as a film, I would not swap either for her friendship over the years. Writing can provide many riches that money just cannot buy.