He studied English and had intended to be an academic, but he instead signed a contract with the record-publishing group EMI, making two albums and several singles early in the decade under the pseudonym Matthew Ellis on the Regal Zonophone label.
[1] Inspired by authors such as Charles Dickens (a childhood favorite), Wilkie Collins, and Mary Elizabeth Braddon, this thriller novel is set both in a dirty, corrupting 1850s London, and Evenwood, an idyllic country estate—both equally full of mysteries.
In preparation for surgery he was prescribed the steroidal drug dexamethasone,[4] one of the effects of which was to initiate a temporary burst of mental and physical energy.
This, combined with the stark realization that his blindness might return if the treatment wasn't successful, spurred Michael finally to begin writing in earnest the novel that he had been contemplating for over thirty years, and which up to then had only existed as a random collection of notes, drafts, and discarded first chapters.
Following surgery, work continued on what is now The Meaning of Night, and in January 2005, after a hotly contested UK auction, it was sold to John Murray (a subdivision of Hodder Headline) for £430,000.