Map of Blue Book Balloon

About me, and contacts...


I do many things, I possibly even do some of them well.

In family life I'm the Husband of the Vicar in a small village that you may recognise from Midsomer Murders on ITV ("Barnaby" outside the UK). I am a parent to two children, an adult daughter with autism and severe learning disabilities and a now adult son who's training to be a priest in the Church of England.

We have two dogs. Peanut is a boy Bichon Friese whose home broke up. He's an enthusiast for walks, barking at passers by, the postman, visitors... in fact just barking in general... for dozing on the bed, for bossing his brother around, in fact he's an enthusiast for everything that matters, except baths. Blue, our other dog, is a black Labrador, he is the most Labrador of  Labs (ever hungry, but one look and he'll break your heart - not that I'm soft with the boys. No way).

In not-family life, I once was a physicist (I have a PhD: Neural Network Studies of Lithofacies Classification - it would now be called "Machine Learning" you can read it, the university got it scanned in!) but swerved to work in an office nearly 30 years ago. My employer has asked that its staff don't say who exactly they work for which makes it all sound very ominous, but it's really not - who am I to argue with that though? 

Not sure how I got out of the lab: I think they left the door open.

I'm a reader by inclination and enjoy fiction, especially SFF/ weird, crime(ish), history, nonfic about places. Would love to receive such books for review, still prejudiced in favour of hardcopy (death to all trees!) but pragmatic - I'm on Netgalley and have a Kindle app and everything. 

I can be reached via the gadget on the homepage, or as blue book balloon (but one word) at outlook dot com.

You can also find me on Twitter (it will always be Twitter for me, until it expires - so probably not long now) at 


Increasingly I am on on Blue Sky, at


I also review on Amazon, Goodreads and Waterstones.

Also: Curator of an unruly garden, eater of soft fruit, occasional wielder of an archaeology trowel and I completed a part time masters in Public Policy at LSE.

Version history:

Created 11/3/2018
Updated 28/8/2023

2 comments:

  1. David, I can't thank you enough for sticking with me from my very first days as an author - can I actually call myself that now? A very considered and generous review, if you don't mind me saying. Thank you very, very much for taking part in the Orenda booktours. Matt.

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  2. I think three published books tells its own story... it's been great to read them, and to meet you at the launch last year. And a privilege to be able to join the tours and review them too.

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