Welcome to my web site:
I wrote my first novel when I was eighteen. They say write about what you know. I didn’t know anything, so it was dire and lurks in a cupboard in my office, 104,000-words of tosh, not worthy of publication but representing too much effort to be converted into copy paper or chucked out.
Fiction retained its interest, though, and I resolved to have another go when I’d made some money, so I could write in reasonable comfort. This took rather longer than I’d expected; forty years in fact, by which time I had married, had two daughters, four grandchildren and various jobs in journalism, public relations and advertising. I quit at fifty, by this time less a writer than a company director and number-cruncher, and started work on a humorous novel that included some flying sequences. It was this that caught the eye of my editor Martin Fletcher at Headline and led to the first of my two-book deals, that lucky chance that had taken almost half a century to arrive.
Now I’m working on my fourth novel (more information here) but life is not spent entirely locked away. I contribute features to various publications including OLDIE magazine and have written short stories for radio. And there is still time for hobbies like racing cars and sailing boats. Whether family, and particularly grandchildren, also classify as a hobby I don’t know, but much time is set aside for them as well.
To be considered a novelist still gives me a great buzz. It was a long time coming but the reality is just as rewarding, and as much fun, as I’d expected. It’s hard and consuming work but nobody’s asking you to do it, unless perhaps it’s those readers who have stuck with you from the beginning. To them, thank you. To readers new and yet to come, I hope you find the work interesting, informative, entertaining and, to use that word so favoured by reviewers when describing adventure stories, ‘gripping.’ To use another over-used word, ‘feedback’ is always appreciated. That’s what the blog is for.
