From Detective Inspector Declan Walsh to Doctor Who, Tony Lee’s Career Has Been Anything But Ordinary—Even for an Author
For thirty-plus years, multi-modal writer Tony Lee has been no stranger to the industry. He started by writing game reviews for a British magazine at sixteen years old, and now, his name is associated with successful franchises such as Doctor Who, Starship Troopers, DC Comics, Marvel Comics, and Star Trek. With over 170 million pages reads on Kindle Unlimited and five hundred thousand books sold, Tony, writing as Jack Gatland, is a veteran of the writing community. But he didn’t start off as a writer. At twenty years old, he was partially paralyzed, and with nothing else to do but write, he began working on a radio comedy sketch show, which springboarded his career as a writer, where he could create without boundaries.
Tony has been a hustler his entire life, having made the most life-changing decision of his entire career in his early thirties. That was when fellow writer Andy Briggs, known for his work in film, comics, and TV, steered him to chat with fellow author and screenwriter Barry Hutchinson about independent publishing. It was also when COVID-19 sparked a global lockdown and a dramatic shift in people’s careers across industries. In the midst of 2020, Tony took it as a sign that all the things he had been doing to write professionally—comics, film, TV, and network shows—had dried up. He had been doing school talks—then schools had closed. And in September 2020, Tony had six months’ worth of money saved to give writing a good go—or else return to a nine-to-five, something he says he dreaded more than anything. “As a freelancer, you work all the hours,” he says. “What terrified me about the nine-to-five is I wouldn’t be writing.”
He still finds it terrifying, he admits.
At this pivotal time, Tony discovered the 20BooksTo50K® group and found a lifeline. He could publish his work and get paid for it without using an agent. Tony had been writing crime dramas for TV and film that hadn’t been commissioned yet, so he took them all and created a crime novel universe that he published under the pen name Jack Gatland.
That decision was in September 2020, and by November 2020, he had written his first reader magnet.
His projects, once commissioned for TV, were named Dead Letter, Duality, and Hunter Hunted. Under Jack Gatland, those manuscripts became the now-world-renowned Detective Inspector Declan Walsh series. The end of November 2020 saw his first book—Letter from the Dead—out in the world, and in January 2021, he published the second book in the series, which he titled Murder of Angels. By February 2023, he had published the third book. He kept the title Hunter Hunted for that novel—because who wouldn’t? Now, the series comprises nineteen books, which makes for a total of thirty-one across Tony’s entire catalog.
“When I did this, I genuinely thought this was my Band-Aid, so I could pay some bills while I waited for my real job to start,” he says. “By book 4, I realized this was my real job. Now, as we talk here four years later, I’ve got thirty-one books out. It’s become my life.”
Tony’s move into self-publishing wasn’t the end of his career in comics, film, TV, and games. As the industry came back to life following the pandemic, he began writing for other mediums again alongside his novel-writing career. He still has his hands in the entertainment industry and currently has four manuscripts optioned for production.
Moving into the average writerly discussions of a not-so-average guy, Tony says his writing process involves half-plotting, half-pantsing, and at the end of a novel, he has a pair of editors who put the gloss on his story. One of his editors is a literal rocket scientist—who also happens to be his brother—and he helps Tony with the developmental side of his work. He then sends the manuscript to his final editor for a copyediting pass before handing it off to a loyal team of beta readers.
His writing speed he attributes to dictation. Tony says he likes to dictate while he walks, then uses AI to clean things up after—anything to give him back five minutes in his busy schedule, he says. He uses his time walking the dog to record on his phone, a special AI-powered recorder, or his Apple Watch. During this time, he says he’s able to dictate around 2,500 words, which just need a pass through ChatGPT and his custom GPT to clean things up a bit.
Tony attributes half of his time as dedicated writing time; the rest of it he commits to the aspects of publishing beyond the words. In that 50 percent, alongside his administrative tasks, he manages to fit running a comic convention in the UK and school visits to meet readers of his best-selling children’s books, which helped him earn the “New York Times bestseller” title. He also funds the £2,500 Caliburn Prize, a yearly grant for unpublished UK comic creators.
When asked how he manages all the multiple projects he has going on, he says his life runs on Notion, the project management software. He micromanages himself down to the minute in certain cases. But like a typical writer, he has a little bit of chaos in his life, too. “You have to get on the bike and start cycling,” he says. “After a few miles, you get into the groove of how to cycle, [but] during those first few miles, you're struggling, falling off, stumbling, getting back up again.” Tony says he thrives on deadlines, but he loves to watch them pass him by. And although he would like to slow down a bit, his lingering fear of the ordinary desk job gives him the energy to keep pedaling.
Tony’s story is one of perseverance, with lessons for seasoned and new writers alike. Tony takes the title writer and applies it to multiple mediums across multiple industries, all with the intent of telling a damn good story. But his own story, of stumbling into writing and then declaring it the last thing he wants to let go of, is one most authors share.
Left to our own devices, writers will write, whether it be for BBC radio dramas, film, television, comics, or the independent writing community. Any onlooker will still find Tony doing what he loves—instead of making the shift from one industry to the other, however, he’s doing both. Whether he’s writing as Jack Gatland or New York Times bestselling author Tony Lee, the man is here to be a creative and tell stories for millions around the globe to enjoy—in whatever form they take.
David Viergutz