News & events

Phosphate Rocks – do engineers read fiction?

Posted on May 1, 2025 in News, Phosphate Rocks

May 2025 sees the start of a 52-part serialisation of my 3rd novel – Phosphate Rocks: A Death in Ten Objects.

The Chemical Engineer, (TCE), the monthly magazine of the Institute of Chemical Engineers, will publish a chapter a week online. The next 12 print editions of TCE will also carry an extract.

Phosphate Rocks was first published by Sandstone Press in 2021, inspired by my very first graduate job at the SAI Fertiliser Factory in Leith docks, Edinburgh. Although it is a work of fiction, all but one of the incidents described happened in my working life as a chemical engineer, though not necessarily to the same people in the same place at the same time.

A publisher of mine once claimed that engineers don’t read fiction – I’m really hoping to prove them wrong!

And if anyone would like a free poster, I prepared one for ChemEng Day 2025 at Sheffield University (inspired by my great friend Dr Joanna Carpenter) – just get in touch and I can send the PDF.