Look and Listen

Biography

I live on the west coast of Scotland, where I do landscape gardening and walk a lot amid splendid maritime and mountain scenery. I've always loved to write, finding it spiritually, psychologically, and indeed physically beneficial but it wasn't until the self-publishing revolution came along that I began to seriously consider the idea of writing and actually publishing a novel. The story of Beauty and the Beast has fascinated me since childhood. I was swept away by La Belle et la Bete - still am every time I see it - but it wasn't until the event described below took place in my own life that the seed was planted which later took on potentially literary form. Some years ago, my son and I were having a midday drink in a City of London tavern. A group of fellow customers, lunch break evidently over, started to head our way - making for the exit, which happened to be close by us. We stood aside to make room for the party to pass. Checking for pretty girls - well, one does in such moments - as the troupe filtered by, my attention was snagged by the appearance among them of the ugliest female I had ever seen in my life. The words just came out - too loud: "How ugly is that?" "She heard you, Dad, she heard you," my son protested, appalled, and disgusted. And I knew she'd heard me - I had seen it in her stricken eyes as she passed. I never will forget that look. The incident will haunt me to my dying day. I often wonder how she is - how life has treated her, how she's coping with the burden of her looks. I hope she's found love and happiness, someone to adore her. This novel is a tribute to her, that stranger, and personal act of exorcism.

Inspiration

Writers have always been my heroes. I used to devour interviews with writers - Henry Miller, Hemingway, William Faulkner, William Burroughs and put their pictures up on the walls of my room.