ADAM HARDAKER
Liverpool Author & Storyteller
Stories about people, places and the moments that stay with us.
I'm Adam Hardaker, an independent author from Liverpool.
I write about the things that stay with us — family, football, loss, social care, neurodiversity, forgotten history and the city I call home.
On paper, those might sound like completely different subjects.
To me, they're all stories about people.
That's where every story starts.
THE STORY BEHIND THE STORIES ↓
THE STORY BEHIND THE STORIES
Long before I started writing books, I was collecting stories.
LIVERPOOL. FOOTBALL. FAMILY. PEOPLE.
Liverpool has always been part of how I see the world.
The streets, the humour, the football, the people and the stories passed from one generation to another.
Football was never just ninety minutes. It was who you went with, where you sat, the walk to the ground and the people who weren't there anymore.
Those ideas eventually became The Blue Seat Chronicles - but the stories started long before the books did.
A LIFE IN SOCIAL CARE
For nearly three decades, I've worked in health and social care, including many years managing services supporting people with learning disabilities, autism and complex needs.
That world taught me more about people than any writing course ever could.
I saw kindness, humour, bureaucracy, pressure, difficult decisions and ordinary people trying to do the right thing in systems that don't always make it easy.
Years later, those experiences would help shape Registered and influence the way I write about people throughout all of my books.
Different worlds. Same fascination. People.
Whether I'm writing about a football ground, a care service, a family or a forgotten institution, the question underneath it is usually the same:
What was it like for the person standing in the middle of it?
WHY I WRITE
Because ordinary lives are rarely ordinary when you actually stop and listen.
I didn't start writing because I thought I had some grand message to give people.
I started because there were stories I couldn't quite leave alone.
A seat beside you that suddenly becomes empty. A person trying to do the right thing inside a complicated system. A family experiencing the same moment in completely different ways. A building whose walls have seen things everyone else would rather forget.
They're very different stories.
But they're all about the same thing.
People - and the moments that leave something behind.
That's what I keep coming back to.
BEYOND THE BOOKS
Because apparently I do occasionally put the pen down.
Liverpool isn't just where I'm from. It's in pretty much everything I write.
And then there's Everton.
Matchdays, generations of the same family going to the game, the walk to the ground, the people in the seats around you - football has given me more stories than I could ever fit into a book.
Although being an Evertonian has also given me enough material for several tragedies.
EVERTON & MY CITY
FAMILY
Away from writing, I'm a husband and dad to four boys, and a miniature Daschaund - which means silence is largely something I write about rather than experience.
Family sits underneath a lot of my work, even when it isn't obvious.
The relationships between generations, the things families remember differently and the ordinary moments that become important later are themes I keep returning to.
WHEN I'M NOT WRITING
I'm usually watching football, talking about football, making something about football or wondering why I've decided to talk about football again.
I also create videos, write about the things that interest me and spend far too much time disappearing down historical rabbit holes.
Somewhere in between all of that, another book normally starts taking shape
WHERE IT REALLY STARTED
Not every story starts with an idea for a book.
22 FEBRUARY 2021
There is a date behind all of this.
In February 2021, I reached the lowest point of my life. I went to Liverpool's docks believing I wasn't coming home.
I did.
What followed wasn't some miraculous transformation. Life didn't suddenly become easy, and writing didn't magically fix everything.
But somewhere in what came afterwards, I started putting things into words.
The things I'd experienced. The people I'd known. Football. Family. Work. Loss. Mental health. The moments we carry around without really knowing what to do with them.
Eventually, those words became stories.
And those stories became books.
The books came later.
The reason for writing came first.
And I'm still here to tell the stories.
IF YOU'RE STRUGGLING, PLEASE TALK TO SOMEONE.
JAMES' PLACE | SAMARITANS
Now I get to share them.
WHAT CAME NEXT
One story became another. Then another.
I never really set out with a plan to become an author.
I wrote one story. Then found another one waiting behind it.
Since then, my books have taken me from the blue seats of Everton to the forgotten corridors of The Hollows; from the realities of social care to a family trying to understand the same world through different eyes.
Different genres. Different characters. Different periods of history.
But somehow, they all came from the same place.
I started writing because I needed somewhere for the stories to go.
MORE THAN THE BOOKS
Sometimes the story doesn't need 300 pages.
BLUE SEAT
CHRONICLES
Football, Everton and the stories that exist beyond the scoreline.
Matchdays, memories, opinions and the people who make football what it is.
I also talk, film, record and occasionally ramble about the things that matter to me - football, books, mental health, social care, Liverpool and whatever else has caught my attention that week.
THE SEAT WE FILL
Longer conversations about people, experiences and the stories we don't always get the chance to hear.
The podcast is another place for those stories to have a seat.
FROM
ADAM
The bit that doesn't always fit neatly anywhere else.
Updates, thoughts, behind-the-scenes bits, new projects and whatever I'm working on next.