Alan Carter was born in Sunderland, UK. He immigrated to Australia in 1991 and divides his time between the beach at Fremantle and life on a farm in New Zealand's South Island. He sometimes works as a television documentary director and in his spare time follows the black line up and down the local swimming pool.

He is the author of four previous novels, including the Cato Kwong books Prime Cut (winner of the Ned Kelly Award for Best First Fiction in 2010), Getting Warmer and Bad Seed, and a standalone, Marlborough Man, set in New Zealand.