I had to give away my first novel… now I’ve sold a million books (but still need my cows for inspiration!)

As five major publishers in London were locked in a fierce bidding war for the rights to his debut novel, James Oswald was on his Fife farm, cold and wet and battling a snowstorm while frantically rounding up escaped cattle.

With his cows successfully recaptured, he was mending a fence when his literary agent rang with the incredible news: Penguin had just bought his book rights for a six-figure sum.

James said: ‘I will never forget that jaw-dropping moment. My face was being blasted by the blizzard and my first thought was, great, now I can pay someone else to mend the fences. I could buy a new tractor.’

The deal was quite the feat given that for years his novels had been rejected by the big literary houses and he was forced to become a self-publishing phenomenon to get noticed.

Two decades on, James is one of Scotland’s most celebrated writers, having sold a million books worldwide.

His Inspector McLean detective novels, set in the dark underbelly of Edinburgh, have a particularly loyal following.

James has also written the popular five-part epic fantasy series The Ballad of Sir Benfro, which he says has ‘dragons and magic and all sorts of wonderful nonsense’.

His latest book, Broken Ghosts, is his 22nd novel and an introspective departure from his previous work. It draws on his own experiences of grief following the death of his parents in a car accident.

James averages up to three books a year while also managing 300 acres and a fold of Highland cattle at his farm at Fliskmillan, near Newburgh in Fife. As he talks, he is sitting in a stunning dream house of his own design; his writing desk is positioned at a glass gable wall filled with the spectacular vista of his farm, the Tay and the Southern Highlands beyond.

‘This is the house that Penguin built,’ he jokes.

At times the 57-year-old can barely believe his accomplishments, given the many years of what he calls ‘rave refusals’ from publishers who praised his books but didn’t buy them.

His first novel, Natural Causes, featuring the complicated and privately educated Inspector Tony McLean, was written in 2006 but numerous publishers rejected it, claiming supernatural elements in the story made it unsaleable.

James said: ‘They told me they loved it but there was no market. I think I have sold enough books since to show that wasn’t quite the case.’

When Natural Causes was shortlisted in the Crime Writers’ Association Debut Dagger award for unpublished works, James hoped the attention would lead to a book deal. It didn’t materialise.

The second of the series, the Book of Souls, was shortlisted for the award the following year but it also failed to attract publishers given it similarly crossed the genres of crime and the supernatural.

Then in July 2008 all writing ambitions came to a devastating halt when his father David, 71, and mother Juliet, 68, were killed in a crash on the A9 south of Inverness.

They were driving home to the farm at Fliskmillan after a fishing trip in Sutherland. Three of the Oswalds’ four dogs also died in the crash. At the time, James and his long-term partner Barbara had just bought a house in rural Wales, where they were working in agriculture; it was remote and unreachable by phone.

At 3am, two police officers knocked at the couple’s door and when James saw them, he had a bizarre thought.

He said: ‘I had written so much crime fiction by then that I immediately wondered what I could possibly have done wrong. It never occurred to me they were there to bring me such bad news.’

He reflects on how he, his two brothers and sister managed to navigate such a bereavement.

He said: ‘Imagining it, you wonder how you could cope. The reality is you must cope; you must get on with it. You must go out, take the dogs for a walk, go to work.

‘You must keep on living. That’s how you deal with it, one day after another. My siblings and I have been very supportive of each other. We all lost our parents together.’

Amid their desolation, the family had to establish what to do with the farm they had now inherited. It had been so precious to their parents.

Juliet had been raised on a farm in Easter Ross and David’s family line was from landed gentry in Ayrshire.

Rural living had been in the couple’s blood.

For financial reasons David had initially taken a job in the London Stock Exchange but hated the daily grind of commuting from the family’s home in the Hertfordshire countryside.

When the Oswalds wrote their annual Christmas wish list, David would simply write ‘farm’. In 1988, when David was given a generous severance package from the City, at last came his yearned-for farm: a 500-acre arable and livestock property centred around Norman’s Law – the highest hill in north Fife and home to an Iron Age fort.

James was the first in the family to view it since he was in Scotland studying psychology at Aberdeen University and he thought it was a perfect purchase.

The Oswalds loved it there and threw themselves into the community. Juliet had a passion for competitive carriage driving and was a dressage judge, while David worked the land and indulged in his hobby of gliding.

The siblings were close, so there was no squabbling over the inheritance. James was the only one who wanted to be a farmer; his youngest brother took the Georgian farmhouse, and some land was sold off to pay the remaining siblings.

James said: ‘I wouldn’t have argued if they had wanted to sell it but I really wanted the farm. I have never been a city person. I am a bit of a recluse at heart.

‘Time spent in my own head, either at the keyboard or the wheel of the tractor, is when I am at my happiest.’

As his brother had been given the house, James moved into a static caravan, which he kept in a barn to shelter it from the westerly winds.

‘I loved it,’ he said. ‘I made a study in it and a wood-burning stove and it was cosy.’

Barbara came back and forth from Wales until they were able to sell their house, while James worked the farm, which was now down to 350 acres with arable crops, Highland cattle and New Zealand Romney sheep.

With the funds from his books, he built a far grander house than originally planned and in 2017 he and Barbara had to move in before it was finished – a storm had sent the roof of the barn crashing down on their caravan.

For three years after his parents died, James stopped writing altogether, blocked by a mixture of grief and exhaustion. It was the first time since he was old enough to hold a pen that he didn’t want to follow his passion for creating characters on the page.

He said: ‘I didn’t have the mental capacity to do everything on the farm and write. Every time I tried to write, I just couldn’t get the creative urge. I think it was my way of grieving.

‘It took a while for my mind to work through the loss of my parents.’

But in 2012 when someone suggested the Amazon Kindle and self-publishing, he felt it was time to try again with Inspector McLean. He charged a nominal price for the first book, Natural Causes, but it barely sold five a week. Then he made it free, hoping readers would buy the second in the series, the Book of Souls.

The tactic worked beyond anything he could have imagined.

When he did his routine check of the downloads, he was staggered to find they had jumped from a couple a day to 1,000 – then they doubled to 2,000 a day.

Readers loved the first book and snapped up the second. Downloads soared to 350,000. Cross-genre or not, he had proved his books were saleable and his name spread in literary circles.

He was signed by Juliet Mushens, agent to a host of literary luminaries including Richard Osman, and he secured not just a £156,000 three-book deal with Penguin but a similar advance in Germany.

James was flown to Hollywood to appear on Craig Ferguson’s late-night talk show, which was fun but rather daunting. 

He said: ‘It was a strange experience for a Fife farmer. The Americans were very friendly but they are so loud. I am not and I sounded like I was speaking at a whisper when I watched it back on TV.’

For a while, he tried to do it all – the farm and the books – but he eventually sold his sheep because the lambing season was too punishing.

He kept his Highland cows and now has 45, which he uses for breeding and beef. When he is stuck for inspiration, he goes to visit them and brushes their shaggy coats. He said: ‘They nudge me to coax me to brush them. They form a queue, that’s how much they like it.’

It is hard to imagine such a serene scene inspiring plot lines for the grisly murders McLean has been given to investigate.

The books have received critical acclaim for the writing, their gripping characters, originality and page-turning pace. Unlike many other crime writers, James

doesn’t use the plethora of retired forensic scientists and former detectives who have created an industry in giving advice to police procedural novelists.

James said: ‘I think if you put too much of that into your book, it makes it very dull. I prefer my books to be character driven.’

Many of the settings for his murders are in areas of Edinburgh such as Leith Walk and Trinity, which he grew familiar with when he lived in the city while Barbara did a PhD.

James admits that before becoming an author and farmer he never had a solid career.

As well as some agricultural consultancy, he worked in retail, temp jobs and a call centre, all of which he believes was helpful in creating characters. ‘You learn a lot about people dealing with customers in a call centre,’ he said.

In 2022, ‘utterly exhausted’ at the end of book 12 in his crime series, All That Lives, James had Inspector McLean retire himself from Lothian and Borders police.

Much to the joy of his fans, in February this year he brought him back in For Our Sins, to become embroiled in more gangland plots and chasing down killers.

James laughs: ‘I wasn’t going to kill the goose that laid the golden eggs. He bought my house and I need him to keep paying for the cows.’

His books have given him a lucrative income and he is now successful enough to take greater control of his career.

James said: ‘I had wanted to be a writer for so long that if a publisher had said jump, I would have asked how high. I am a bit wiser now. I am trying to get down to just one book a year.’

His latest work, Broken Ghosts, published by Wildfire, is a coming-of-age novel centred around a teenage girl who has just buried her parents after they were killed in a freak fire at their family home.

She is forced to leave Scotland to live with her uncle and aunt in their home in the Welsh woods, where she meets a strange girl, Gwyneth, who wanders the forest barefoot and alone. It is a beautifully written novel imbued with empathy, spirits and magic.

James had written the scene where she loses her parents before he lost his own, and he didn’t return to writing the book until long after they died.

His own suffering has left its imprint on the novel. James said: ‘It would have been a different book if I had finished it before. It did become this strangely moving meditation on grief.

‘My parents’ deaths gave me a lot of insight into grief and how people cope. I can completely understand why people fall apart.’

James and Barbara, his partner of 35 years, have no children and live an idyllic life on their farm, but he admits that he could easily slip into a reclusive existence, given the beauty and peace of their surroundings.

He said: ‘Every so often I find it’s a good idea to sit in a café and listen to other people’s conversations, otherwise you forget how people interact and the writing suffers for it.

‘I love my life writing on the farm and I honestly have no idea why my books took off like they did – but I am grateful for it.’