Everyone’s got a novel in them, or so they say.
But if some 20 people up around Fort William never write theirs down, they needn’t worry – JD Kirk has them covered.
The Highlands-based author, real name Barry Hutchison (“I’ve no idea what JD stands for”), has been putting out crime novels at breakneck speed for the past three years.
“Well actually, at a speed of about 4mph,” he jokes, revealing he writes only while walking on his treadmill desk.
The latest release, One For The Ages, is the 16th book in his multi-million-selling DCI Logan series; the other four being a spinoff series.
In this instalment, readers pick up with DCI Logan as he’s called to the far north of Scotland after a blood-soaked old man is spotted wandering through a sleepy fishing village.
His neighbours think he’s been in an accident – until he leads them to his home, and to the mutilated remains of his late wife.
As always, DCI Logan is on the case; but the bigger mystery here is, how does one person write 20 novels in three years?
“I just type dead quick!” jokes Kirk, chatting on Zoom from his home office.
It’s a bright, colourful space that calls back to his former life as a children’s author, which he did for the ten years up to 2019 – often outpacing publishing schedules by three or four books at a time even then.
“No seriously,” he continues, “I’ve thought about this before, and I think I just thought everyone wrote at that speed.”
However, a conversation with his son on a recent family holiday about ‘mental pictures’ revealed to 45-year-old Kirk that he has a rare neurological condition.
Brain condition helps JD Kirk write ‘dead quick’
“I have this thing called aphantasia,” he explains, “which is the inability to see mental pictures. If somebody says ‘picture a beach’, I will think of a list of words that describe a beach. I won’t ‘see’ anything.
“I remember my dad, when I was young and couldn’t sleep, saying: ‘Well shut your eyes and count sheep.’ And I’d go: ‘What f****** sheep, what you on about?’”
It’s thought that aphantasia affects around 3% of people, and for Kirk, it helps explain his enormous output.
“I think completely in words, and I think that helps me write quickly,” he says.
“Because I think a lot of writers imagine a scene, and then have to translate that scene from pictures into words in their head, and then write that down. But for me, there’s no translation delay.
“Plus,” he adds, “I really do type very fast.”
Readers ‘started knitting for fictional babies’
Whether it’s talent, wiring, or his meditative Lego-building in between chapters, it’s clear Kirk is doing something right.
His self-published DCI Logan series has captured an insanely loyal fan following, with a dedicated Facebook group which saw members calling up their elderly peers on Christmas Day last year for a chat.
So what’s the secret to inspiring such love for fictional people? Laughter, obviously.
“I wrote the first book completely seriously, I thought it was going to be a really gritty crime thriller,” Kirk reveals with a chuckle.
“And then everyone started emailing me to tell me how funny it was! I thought ‘well it wasn’t meant to be!’”
Now though, Kirk has leaned into his own humour.
He’s kept up the playful banter between his detective characters for a score of books – and he’s got no intention of letting it drop any time soon.
It’s clear that for him, the community of readers is part of the fun.
“You know, I’ll get maybe 300-500 emails a week from readers, and not one of them has ever been about the plots of the books,” he says incredulously.
“To the extent that there’s a character in the recent books that’s been pregnant with twins, and two separate people have emailed me saying they’ve started knitting for the babies.
“You know,” he grins, “the fictional babies who don’t exist.”
One For The Ages by JD Kirk, published by Zertex Media, RRP £9.99, is out now.
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