The long-running serial was the first major television drama to be made in the Gaelic language and was shot entirely on the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides. He created and wrote major drama serials for both BBC and the Independent Television Network in the UK including Machair which he co-created with Janice Hally for Scottish Television. In the following fifteen years, May earned more than 1,000 TV credits. May went on to create another major TV series for the BBC, Squadron, a drama involving an RAF rapid deployment squadron. May's novel The Reporter became the prime-time 13-part television series entitled The Standard in 1978. May was asked to adapt the book as a television series for the British television network the BBC, and left journalism in 1978 to begin to write full-time for television. At the age of 26, May's first novel, The Reporter, was published. He went on to write for The Scotsmanand the Glasgow Evening Times. At the age of 21, he won the Fraser Award and was named Scotland's Young Journalist of the Year. He made his first serious attempt at writing a novel at the age of 19, which he sent to Collins where it was read by Philip Ziegler, who wrote him a very encouraging rejection letter.

From an early age he was intent on becoming a novelist, but took up a career as a journalist as a way to start earning a living by writing. May's books have sold more than two million copies in the UK and several million internationally. In 2014, Entry Island won both the Deanston's Scottish Crime Novel of the Year and the UK's ITV Crime Thriller Book Club Best Read of the Year Award. The Lewis Man won the French daily newspaper Le Télégramme 's 10,000-euro Grand Prix des Lecteurs. Barry Award for Crime Novel of the Year and the national literature award in France, the CEZAM Prix Litteraire. He is the recipient of writing awards in Europe and America. Peter May (born 20 December 1951) is a Scottish television screenwriter, novelist, and crime writer. The Lewis Trilogy, The China Thrillers, The Enzo Filesġ973 Scottish Young Journalist of the Year Television drama, Thriller, Mystery, Crime Fiction May receiving the Prix Cezam Literature Award in Strasbourg, France, in 2011

The blackhouse trilogy