Adam Scott of Tushielaw - King of Thieves

I might consider lifting your sheep - but at least I'm not nicking your words like a number of the poetry shitehawks out there.

All of this plagarism bullshit of late is the product of a writing world scared to take any chances or to dare dream an original line. It's a world of paying to enter competitions, paying to purchase chapbooks - paying to buy yourself a little credibility.

To be honest, I don't care. Writing is on its arse. Hardly anybody reads anymore. It's just a matter of time before someone puts something out in text-speak.

So I feel free to explore my interest in the Border Reivers, local heritage, Northumberland...it doesn't matter, because only half a dozen people will ever read it anyway. It's not fashionable, it doesn't sell. So any pressure is well and truely off.

Adam Scott may well be a distant relative. My grandmother was a Scott, and her ancestors hailed from Canonbie, Castleton, Ewes as far back as I can get. All lines head North towards Ettrick. Her great Grandfather, James Scott, was the last keeper of Warkworth Castle, coming over to join his son Arthur, who'd taken employment as a gamekeeper in Northumberland. That's how that side of my family ended up there.

As for the Taits - it looks like we ducked across the Border from Yetholm to evade the Border purges in the 1620s. John Tait 'Chief' of the Dowknow had got off Scott-free when his two reiving friends, Frissells, sons of the Laird of Overton, were hanged. Maybe it was him that crossed the line.

But King of Thieves is a book not just about people, but place, history, legend... I understand the Border people. They've never changed.

Themes such as vengance, retribution and feud come as easily to me as dreams. They are there in my psyche, all part of my personality.

You can meet the reivers face to face, up close and personal in these pages. Smell the burning heather and roof hatches, hear the whinny of the horses.

Many people have had claim on the title of 'Northumbrian writer,' but most of them aren't Borderers at all. Not by birth, or blood. Their red stuff isn't in the soil. I'm also descended from the Armstrongs of Whitehaugh, the Robsons of Falstone, the Nixons. If you've been here long enough, all the lines begin to mix.

That doesn't give me any sway, but it does give me an understanding. When the Robsons (I'm married to one) returned from a raid on the Grahams with scabbed sheep that soon spread among their own and they returned to hang the perpetrators and leave a note saying: 'Next time gentlemen come to take your sheep, they are not to be scabbed,' I get it. I'd do it myself. I think it's funny.

I write my lines to bring these people back to life, to celebrate the culture of the first Mafia. Farmers, cattle rustlers, gangsters - survivors who lived by their own wits, friendships and common bonds to steal and exploit.

Now away and find yourself someone to read that the Guardian or the Arts Council says you should read, or bleed your heart out when BBC Radio 4 whines 'Where are the Working Class writers?'

Boo-fucking-hoo. Writers are all around you.

They just don't need a label to define themselves.