Look and Listen

Biography

I have no publishing history as a writer yet. I have however, been writing since I was about 3 years old (and talking non-stop too, I hasten to add)! I live in Germany with a grey-haired Tom cat who is in his fifties, (hope he forgives me), and two inherited zebra finches who have been busy producing two offspring. Unfortunately, one of the offspring has entered the realms of a "Whodunnit" as it was found upended in their birdbath at the bottom of the cage. The question is, "Was he pushed or did he fall?" Many things have happened in my life and I hope to cash in on events one day, but I am still not sure how the book will turn out, if at all. I write and illustrate in my spare time when not driving as a courier and helping to run our Polish pottery business. I have recently finished the text for a children´s book called, "Can we dye the car mum?" I am at present working on the pictures for it, having completed the first one a few days ago. I am a self-taught artist. Things could have turned out differently if it hadn´t been for the time I did a year´s art foundation course at Bath Art College and I did my end of term exhibition, only to receive an off the cuff comment, "You know, you´d be better off doing pottery." At that moment, I died inside. The insensitivity of some people never ceases to amaze me. I gave up for years after that and it is only in the last 8 to 10 years that I have picked myself up off the floor, dusted myself down and have said "well blow you," that I am finally doing my own thing and enjoying it. I really enjoy crime fiction books, and crime non-fiction, as well as chic lit because of its utter trivia and escapism. I also enjoy biographies, nature books and how to books. I would love to write a crime book one day. I have written quite a lot of poetry and some short stories. I find that I can relate to the writing of short stories because they have to consist of a certain number of words and this concentrates the mind. I have also written five chapters of a children´s story book which I hope adults would be interested in reading too. I have attempted to attack it from a humerous perspective as, at the time, it appealed to my "silly" side. However, about two years ago, I came to a grinding halt with it, I suspect because I haven´t got characters with enough depth. Attached to the book is a "Mouseictionary of Valuable Known and Unknown Terms," which is better known as "Known and Unknown Terms Best Forgotten." As you will have gathered it is a book with mice in it. This being quite appropriate as we moved onto a farm last September! My motto in life is, "If you´ve been knocked down," and I have been, many times, from a small child onwards and through adulthood, "just get up and try again and again and don´t EVER give up."

Inspiration

I think what has influenced me as a writer is that as a child, both my parents were alcoholics and as a result of that, they were very wrapped up in feeling sorry for themselves. This enabled me to go off to play on my own in the nearby fields (we lived in a caravan for many years), and I only had my imagination to spur me on. Even now, when I am doing courier jobs, I sit in the van all day long and only speak to either the people in the office giving me jobs to do, or the people at the companies where I make the deliveries to, and the most deliveries I do are 3 each day as I either have a van full of boxed goods or anything up to 4 palletts on board. These are the times I get most of my ideas and have often been known to be writing them down as I drive down the motorway before I forget them!