After my first degree in neurobiology from the University of Sussex, my early research career (and PhD from the University of Aberdeen) was in animal welfare, a topic with questions of ‘animal minds’ at its heart. I then spent ten years as an academic, firstly as Director of the Design Research Centre (hence my book on Product Design in 1995) at Brunel University and then Professor and Dean at what is now Ravensbourne University.
Since 2001 I have been an independent consultant, working with many of the world’s biggest brands (e.g. Cisco, HSBC, Google, Lilly, Sony Playstation) and few of London’s most innovative tech start-ups (e.g. Ometria), as well as Universities and charities. For the last ten years my consultancy work has focused on strategy (hence my book The Strategy Manual, published in 2020). Latterly this strategy work has moved increasingly into AI (hence my book AI-Augmented Decisions, published in 2025). You can find out more about my consultancy work at GoalAtlas.com.
My journey to novel-writing began a great many years ago, during my research career. I had the idea that the plight of intensively-farmed animals could best be illustrated through fiction. As a research scientist, always aware of the need to avoid anthropomorphising animals, this could be no Watership Down. No dialogue would pass between the snouts and beaks of the animals in my novel. Not a great start for a debut novel. I did, however, persevere through a 50,000-word first draft, which got me through the very early stages of learning my craft as a novelist.
Next, I embarked on a science thriller. People around the world start dropping dead with a peculiar set of symptoms and the race is on to find out why. Three scientists are adamant they know the answer. One says it is caused by a virus, another believes an environmental toxin is to blame. The third is convinced it is a genetic trait that has been accumulating, unchecked for generations, and only now being detected and reported for the first time. More writing, more learning about how to write but ultimately this was a project overtaken by the pressures of life. It might, however, be one to dust off in a year or two.
Then I started to write Autobiography of an Artificial Mind. I’m not sure I’d have even started if I’d know it would take me almost seven years to finish. But I started, I persevered and here we are, planning the countdown to publication-day. A special mention here to my sister, Lisa, who I have dedicated the novel to. She was a key factor at the start, in the middle and towards the end of this entire writing saga. Also critical was the Jericho Writers Ultimate Novel Writing Course and my wonderful tutor on that course Helen Francis.
The story of how this book came to be is told in more evidence-based detail than any other book I know. How I wrote it and how the novel evolved is explained in a Tale of Three Novels. How I used AI within my creative process, and my attempt to answer the vexed question ‘Did AI write any of this novel?’ is covered in How much was written by AI? An interesting question.
<Author’s note: both articles will be published over the course of September and links here will be updated>.