I've spent twenty-five years solving problems across industries that share almost nothing in common — oil and gas, banking, education, media, government — which, depending on how you look at it, is either a useful qualification for writing about problem-solving or a cry for help.
Somewhere in there I helped build BBC iPlayer when streaming was still the kind of problem people lost sleep over, and I've spent longer than I'd like to admit arguing about architecture in organisations large enough that no two people could agree what "the architecture" actually was. These days I work from home in northwest Tasmania, where the problems are different and the main interruption to my writing day is a 100kg Great Dane named Hamish deciding it's time for lunch. (His mum Freya backs him up. It's a coordinated operation.)
I write non-fiction about thinking clearly and communicating visually, and science fiction about things that won't fit in a diagram. The dogs are indifferent to both genres but supportive of the general concept of sitting still for long periods.
Currently: Completing Arguments That Land, the third and final book in The Practical Thinker series. Two more Ancients of Tomorrow books — The First Ancient and The Hidden Kind — are on their way, and a new series, The Vault-Walkers, is now underway. Negotiating daily with Freya and Hamish over whose office this actually is.
The Practical Thinker Series
A Practical Guide to Visual Communication
How to create diagrams, frameworks, and visual explanations that actually do what you need them to do. For anyone who has ever stood in front of a confusing slide and quietly wondered if there was a better way.
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A Practical Guide to Solving Problems (Even the Ones You Created)
A practical toolkit for anyone who has ever been handed a mess, a deadline, and a look that says "can you fix it?" One pause, three questions, and thirty proven methods for the kinds of problems that don't come with instructions.
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A Practical Guide to Making Your Case
A five-check pre-flight system for anyone who has ever been right and had it make absolutely no difference. Because being right is not enough — the room has to hear it.
Coming SoonThe Ancients of Tomorrow Series
Co-authored with Hugh C. Gray.
Book One of The Ancients of Tomorrow
Beneath a thousand square miles of Queensland swamp, a classified facility is running experiments that shouldn't be possible. Colonel Mack is about to become one of them.
Available on Amazon →
Book Two of The Ancients of Tomorrow
Uterra City has grown into something its founders didn't plan for. So has Mack. The question is whether either of them can be trusted with what they're becoming.
Available on Amazon →
Book Three of The Ancients of Tomorrow
Washington doesn't know what Mack is. Washington is about to find out that this is their problem, not his.
Available on Amazon →
Book Four of The Ancients of Tomorrow
Mack’s transformation is accelerating, and secrecy is running out of road. When stolen Uterra science surfaces inside a Swiss biotech programme, Mack must stop a dangerous synthetic-lattice experiment before it turns human enhancement into a weapon.
Available on Amazon →
Book Five of The Ancients of Tomorrow
A leaked fragment proves Anna Keller survived, and the hunt for people like her begins. As Cross tracks the leak, Sandy maps the science, and Mack’s own body begins to pay the price, Uterra must decide whether to hide the compatible population or warn them before someone worse finds them first.
Coming SoonThe Vault-Walkers Series
Book One of The Vault-Walkers
A Lowmark thief enters a forbidden vault and gains ash magic that exposes the empire’s oldest lie.
Available on Amazon →
Book Two of The Vault-Walkers
Ren enters Highwell, where magical training hides a brutal system built on silence, failure, and bodies spent.
Available on Amazon →
Book Three of The Vault-Walkers
Ancient ruins reveal the vaults were never sacred. They were machines — and they are still running.
Available on Amazon →
Book Four of The Vault-Walkers
As the empire’s structures begin to fail, Ren faces the question every system fears: what is power allowed to decide?
Coming Soon
Book Five of The Vault-Walkers
The final vault structure moves toward completion, and Ren must help the world survive without becoming its new master.
Coming SoonResearch & Writing
Working papers on AI architecture, governance, and verifiable accountability.
Notebook
Essays, short stories, and other writing that isn’t a working paper.
Elsewhere