Jeff Gulvin

Jeff Gulvin is a British novelist who is often mistaken for being American. Though he spends as much time as possible in the US, he was actually born in the Black Country in England. He is the second son of an English father and Scottish mother and has five brothers and sisters. His father Clifford, was an Economic Historian and his mother Margo, a teacher, but being from an academic family did not seem to rub off on their second son. Indeed, he left school at sixteen with only one GCE O level to his name. That was in English Literature and when asked how he managed it given he spent so little time in the classroom, he commented it was only because of Roman Polanski's film version of MacBeth starring Jon Finch and Martin Shaw, which he watched over and over again.

After leaving school in 1978 Jeff worked in many and various roles, mostly in sales and he had a mountaineering equipment shop in Southampton, as well as the first franchise in Rohan Designs. He closed both shops because they took up too much of his time and he was more interested in writing than business. From aged 28 to 35 he worked as a photocopier salesman, an insurance salesman, an asset finance salesman and a commercial mortgage salesman and wrote book after book in the evenings.

Though his novels have always been commercial, Jeff has endeavoured to ensure they always have the right amount of literary polish, having been influenced by people like Graham Greene, Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner and Cormac McCarthy in particular. It took him fifteen years and eight books before his first crime novel Sleep No More was accepted by Bill Massey at Headline in London. After that two more "Aden Vanner" novels followed before he got a break from Humphrey Price at Victor Gollancz who commissioned Storm Crow (1997). Since then he's been compared with the very best of Frederick Forsyth, Patricia Cornwell, John Grisham, and Ted Lewis, the author of Get Carter.

That act of faith enabled Jeff to write full-time and he has been doing that since 1997. He is the author of fourteen novels (three of which were published solely by De Boekerij in the Netherlands) which include fictional London based crime novels and big picture thrillers. He has attained a cult following for his own very detailed and well written novels in addition to garnering notable ghost writing credits. In 2007 Jeff ghosted Long Way Down, the account of a motorcycle trip from John O Groats to Cape Town, by Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman, which subsequently won Best Non Fiction Book of the Year at the 2008 Galaxy British Book Awards. Since then Jeff has assisted James Corden with his autobiography May I Have Your Attention Please and completed three more books for Charley Boorman, including Boorman's most recent work, Extreme Frontiers. He also achieved literary success under the pseudonym Adam Armstrong, penning the novels Cry of the Panther (2000) and Song of the Sound (2001.

Recently, Jeff has returned to writing fiction, with a series of novels being agented by Robert Kirby of United Agents in London and Ben Camardi of Harold Matson Co in New York. The new series, showcases the author's love of the American west and features a new character "John Quarrie", a Texas Ranger working in the 1960s. Written under JM Gulvin, the first of these novels THE LONG COUNT was published in May 2016 by Faber & Faber. The second THE CONTRACT is due out in the spring of 2017 and the third RED DEVIL DRIVE is currently being completed. Jeff's nine title (English language published) back list has been re-issued by Open Road Integrated Media in New York and a YA novel The Dividing is also available in both E and paperback format.

Jeff Gulvin currently lives in Crickhowell, Wales, with his wife Kim. He has two daughters, Amy a translator and Chloe a history teacher.