Matt Hilton Wordpool Author Talk at Layton Library

Action thriller author Matt Hilton enthralled his audience of Wordpool Festival goers on Thursday with tales of his own writing experiences and gave us a little more insight into the protagonist of his popular series: Joe Hunter.

Layton Library had a very strong turnout for the event, many of whom were already avid fans of fictional character Joe Hunter, who is sometimes likened to the famous Jack Reacher, the character from fellow action thriller writer Lee Childs who also happens to be a friend of Matt Hilton.

In person, Matt Hilton is quite different to his fictional character Joe Hunter. Matt hails from Cumbria, he has had a successful career in the police force which ended when he signed a five-book deal with his publisher. It took Matt less than 2 minutes to decide to give up his career to focus on writing full-time, a decision which he has had no regrets, particularly with the growing popularity of his books,  both in the UK and Stateside.

Matt is very down to earth about his success, and willing to talk at length with budding writers in the audience about his experiences and what works for him as a writer. Matt’s books are set in the United States because that is the location setting of the majority of the books that Matt likes to read, and therefore is familiar to him. He explained that many of his best ideas come when he is ‘ruminating’ and he usually takes around three months to write each book before the editing process begins. That’s quite a schedule.

Those of us who were new to Matt Hilton’s books formed a less than orderly queue to purchase the signed copies for sale and have a chat after the lively Q&A session.

Matt Hilton left Layton Library with many new fans and a promise to set one of his short stories in Blackpool.

Matt’s eighth book in the Joe Hunter series, Rules of Honour is out in paperback. For more information about Matt Hilton go online to www.matthiltonbooks.com.