Look and Listen

Biography

Live in Kent in south eastern UK. Now twenty for the third time and getting more from life than ever before because I put a lot into it. I've been a musician since my early years and still play percussion in a wrinkly-rockers band. Also play guitars and keyboards and write songs and instrumentals for the band. After all these years, we're now getting somewhere with our own compositions. Always an avid reader, I started trying to write in my teens. Marriage, bringing up children and running a business meant little time to develop this until later life. Now producing comedy fantasy novels and shorts, and trying to get into more serious writing. Trouble is, I cannot resist an opportunity to bring humor into my writing. Won various writing prizes including one for a short stage play (a comedy, of course) and some for poetry. For me, writing poetry and song lyrics is like beautiful torture: I love it and hate it. Novels are a wider space to work in, a luxuriously large canvas to paint on. First novel published and second and third in the series well on the way. Fourth planned out -- its all just a matter of lots of late nights at the keyboard! Help run a writers' group in Kent which includes some extremely talented people (see S.A.Rule, real name Sue), and I find the friendly (well, sometimes) competition and one or two enthusiastic nit-pickers (editors) help a lot in keeping me on the ball. Ambitions: Lots! But mainly to have a Number One Hit. A novel, preferably, but a song would do. Then another, and another... I hope that my writing is entertaining to the reader -- just that.

Inspiration

Rioja, St Emillion, Barollo -- well, anything red and alcoholic, really. And Jack Daniels when the going gets tough. I appreciate the writing of Stephen Fry, Robert Rankin, Doug Adams, Tom Holt, Terry Pratchett, Sam Smith, J P Sartre, Tolkien, Huxley, Wyndham. Turning point in reading was The Master And Marguerita which I read as a teenager and which introduced me to the wonderful Russian writers. When I am in a serious writing period, I try not to read other writers' work for fear of influence. The New Scientist journal does the trick. People-watching and people-listening provide great inspiration.