BRISTOL NOVELISTS  Writing Group

Paul McIntyre

 

I threw in the towel caring for adults with learning disabilities to backpack around the world with my partner, covering sixteen countries in the space of a year and writing a travelogue along the way. After completing a two-year creative writing course at Bristol University, I subsidized my writing variously by winning the odd TV quiz, invigilating school exams and working as a handyman – the quizzes paying by far the best hourly rate.

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I was co-winner of the 2015 Bristol Festival of Literature Flash Fiction Prize and have been longlisted for the Bristol and Bath short story awards. My short fiction has also featured on BBC radio.

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My debut novel, Raising Dad, is a contemporary adult thriller set in the UK and USA. It revolves around a naïve teenager’s desperate search for his father – a man thought by everybody else to be dead and buried.

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Dad is a widower who’d sacrifice anything for Tom and his brother, who has a learning disability. Tom is heartbroken when Dad abandons them at a children’s home and disappears. His hunt for Dad starts when he becomes an adult. It takes him to Louisiana, and raises dark questions: is Tom to blame for his mother’s death? Why did his best friend kill himself? Could his father be an abuser? Is Dad even really Dad?

 

My fellow Bristol Novelists gave me vital feedback during the drafting process of Raising Dad. I'm represented by the excellent literary agent Bill Goodall, https://billgoodall.co.uk/paul-mcintyre/ and the manuscript is currently on submission to publishers.