Interview with Nick Hirst

Published on Oltobooks.com - 9th February 2022 This is the transcript of an online interview I did for Olto Books. Olto Books: Tell us a little about yourself and your background. Nick Hirst: I’m from England, the suburbs of London, and went to school in Wimbledon. After that, I trained as an actor, subsequently working...

People smuggling in Saudi Arabia

An author insight by Nick Hirst. How do you get your main character into a closed country when it’s essential to the plot? Part of the key is to have some inside knowledge or detailed research or both. Preferably both! In this excerpt from ‘The Shape of Rain’ the protagonist, Jack Conrad, needs to gain...

Second Spider from the Right

Would you like to be a beta reader of Nick Hirst's second novel - 'Second Spider from the Right'? To get a free copy of the book in pdf format click here. and send me an email. I'll reply with a copy attached. Please let me know what you think! First extract - opening from...

The Loudest Voice

Life imitating art - or is it the other way round? By Nick Hirst Russell Crowe stars as Roger Ailes - the man behind Fox News ‘The Loudest Voice’ - shows how real life reflects the events in ‘The Shape of Rain’ narrative. I only got to see this series recently – that’s me, always...

Leaks and Towers

When you hear about governmental ‘leaks’ on the news, have you ever wondered how they actually happen? Well, I have and I concluded that such transfer of information must take place in some secrecy and must include an element of jeopardy. In ‘The Shape of Rain’, a clandestine meeting between a United Nations weapons inspector...

Thrown around the sky

Author insight by Nick Hirst. Writing realistic flying sequences for a novel with a link to a free extract from 'The Shape of Rain'. I have always been crazy keen on flying in any form ever since I was a small boy growing up under the flightpath of Heathrow airport in west London. Flying away...

More than one way to kill a spy

By Nick Hirst. I read that Russian ex-spy Sergei Skripal has been discharged from hospital after recovering from the alleged nerve gas attack on him and his daughter in Salisbury, England. Good news and I have to say, I really didn’t think that he would survive. After all, other such apparent attacks in the UK...

Shocking death of an innocent

By Nick Hirst. It's a sad fact of life today that deadly explosions perpetrated by an individual or organisations to cause maximum fatalities and carnage are all too common throughout developed societies everywhere. Thankfully, most of us do not experience the horror of a man-made explosion first hand. Taking this as my premise, I used...

Shooting on location

by Nick Hirst. There's an old, probably apocryphal, story about the person who said they prefer reading books to watching films because "the scenery is better"...or words to that effect. And it's true that the best books will give you a true sense of location, letting you experience real places in your imagination. In a...