During this time he wrote a regular column about being a bus driver for The Independent,[1] claiming he was replaced by the serial Bridget Jones's Diary.
It won him the McKitterick Prize in 1999, and earned a rare jacket quote from reclusive author Thomas Pynchon, who called it "a demented, deadpan comic wonder".
Following the surprise success of The Restraint of Beasts and its follow-up, All Quiet on the Orient Express, Mills quit work as a bus driver for four months as a "project" to see if he could make it as a full-time writer.
His experience as a bus driver informed the content of his 2009 novel The Maintenance of Headway, the title of which refers to keeping buses equally spaced on their routes.
His 2011 novel A Cruel Bird Came to the Nest and Looked In depicts a kingdom whose king has gone missing without explanation, leaving an absurdist realm "lost in an English fairy-tale world.
The theme of repetition is established early on, as the men fall into a routine of working during the day, going to the local pub at night and "accidentally" killing people along the way.
This theme is explored most vividly in Three to See the King, whose characters live in a largely allegorical world that lacks many of the identifiable conventions of working-class life – they don't have jobs, pubs or anything more than a rudimentary social network.
The main character attempts to establish simple freedom for himself within his small, beloved house, only to find himself at the mercy of unsolicited relationships and the ideology of a charismatic newcomer.
Like most of Mills's characters, he remains desperately attached to his routine, attempting to meet each twist with a calm, reasonable approach, until it becomes impossible.