Although Peter Crowther enjoyed some modest short story successes in the early 1970s, he concentrated the following 16 years on freelance music and arts journalism (interviews including Frank Zappa, Brian Wilson, Cliff Richard and David Puttnam) and as head of corporate communications for one of the UK's biggest financial institutions. He returned to the literary field via freelance review columns, interviews and articles. Assignments included interviews with Ramsey Campbell, Patrick McGrath and Jonathan Carroll (at Carroll's own invitation) in the horror / fantasy field; noted science fiction writers Ray Bradbury, Ian Watson and Harlan Ellison, and, in the crime genre, Ed Gorman, Andrew H Vachss and Robert B Parker. His first fiction for almost 20 years appeared in 1990 in the British magazine Fear, while his second and third new stories sold to Dark Voices 4 and Darklands 2, the latter tale being described by Interzone as 'an object lesson' in how to write a ghost story. Since then, he has sold a further 70 stories to a variety of anthologies and magazines.