The Great Big Book Exchange is a bookshop with a difference. Simon is living with his grandparents after the death of his parents when he happens on it and discovers that Kelly and her boss Terrance offer him the chance to find the books he needs to help him through his bereavement by finding an escape and away of understanding himself.
Simon undertakes a delightful journey of discovery.
Following the death of his parents, 16-year-old Simon moves into his grandparents' claustrophobic bungalow, which quickly becomes a refuge from his bullying peers. United by their voracious appetite for books, Simon and his grandmother stumble across the Great Big Book Exchange - a bookshop with a difference. There they meet impulsive, gothic Kelly and her boss, Terrance - and the friendships forged in the Great Big Book Exchange result in startling and unsettling consequences for all of them.
In 1975 he and his family moved to Newton Aycliffe in County Durham.
In 1988 he began to study English at Lancaster University. He obtained a first class BA degree in 1991. He then studied for an MA in Creative Writing at Lancaster University. Out of this came Does It Show?. From 1992 to 1995 he was at Lancaster University working on his PhD on Angela Carter as a Queer Writer.
In 1995 he moved to Edinburgh to write full-time. His first published writing was the short story Patient Iris.
In 1997 he moved to Norwich to take up a post of full time lecturer at the University of East Anglia teaching English Literature and Creative Writing. With Andrew Motion he organised the MA course in Creative Writing.
In 1998 he began to write stories for the BBC science fiction series Dr Who.
He lives with his partner, author and lecturer, Jeremy Hoad.
