Ian Coates

I’m a bit of a techie as well as a thriller writer. I studied electronics at uni’ more years ago than I care to remember and often use experiences from working in high-tech companies to give my thrillers an authentic background. Although I followed a career in technology, my first love has always been books. There was never anything better than getting into an exciting page-turning thriller, especially ones about spies and assassins.

I won my first writing competition when I was fourteen with a crime novella, and that has spurred me on ever since. My debut thriller was called Eavesdrop, and I was very fortunate to have it shortlisted in a Tibor Jones Page Tuner competition. It was also one of the winners in the centenary Writers’ and Artists’ Yearbook novel writing competition. The biggest excitement came in 2014, though, when Eavesdrop was published in paperback and Kindle by Bad Day Books, Assent Publishing’s suspense and thriller imprint. Audible Studios subsequently released it as an audio book narrated by Simon Darwen after I submitted it to a crime writing competition they were holding.

Backlash is my second novel. It was the runner-up in the 2024 Writers College Global Writing Competition and is published by Wallace Publishing in Essex.

I’m based in Worcestershire, England. I’m a member of the International Thriller Writers Association and the Society of Authors, and send a percentage of my royalties to the British Science Association.