I was a voracious reader from a young age, loving the adventure
contained within Tintin and the Enid Blyton stories, but also the invention and
imagination of Science Fiction by HG Wells, Jules Verne & Nicholas Fisk.
Although I wanted to be an author at the age of five (alongside being
an artist and a snooker player!) writing never became a key part of my life
until the 3rd year of my Mathematics and Statistics degree. Perhaps
all those equations made me hanker after something a little more creative.
At that time I wrote a short story called “Zombies, Robberies and Two
Games of Scrabble” which went down well with friends and family; the plot is
probably somewhat easy to guess at, but sadly no copies of it now remain. Since
then I have written when I can, interspersed within the matrices of life and
work, even creating a fanzine for by dad’s skittles team which ran for the one
season that I wrote it before I moved to London.
I have drifted through several jobs, albeit more settled now, along
the way writing poems and stories for colleagues, as well as for myself, and
had a poem published in 2009 in an anthology. In 2011 I published a collection
of short stories and poems primarily to create some order on my hard drive. In recent years I have had several poems published on Poetry 24, and a haiku in Haiku Journal (see the publications page).
I still read at least one book a week, taking in a wide interest of
crime thrillers, historical fiction, fantasy and factual stories, alongside the
science fiction and adventure, a love of which I still keep to this day. I have
also discovered a pleasure in the poetry of Dylan Thomas and John Clare, both
of whom used the form in different ways but still painted vivid pictures.
When not writing I enjoy listening to folk music, travelling, cooking
and rarely miss Test Match Special when England are playing. I live in London with my wife, who is Swedish, and my two wonderful and infuriating daughters.
In my writing I try first and foremost to entertain, either by using
humour or a sense of adventure and the unusual, although this doesn’t always
work out; I am by no means a literary writer. And I am still very much
exploring my craft, which I expect to be doing for the rest of my life, since I
am sure that all writers continue to explore.
As humans I think we are fascinated by what others have done or are
doing, whether they are friends or foes, and we all want to be told tales
either from a celebrity gossip magazine, or from a humble paperback.
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