*
About Me
I have had my ups and downs. As far back as I can remember I have always wanted to write. I started a school magazine (as a diversion from Latin lessons), largely written by myself (in schoolboy English), which continued to be produced after I left school. Other successes include a 50 minute radio play broadcast by the BBC, (great), numerous articles (over 50) published in local and specialist magazines, and a story outline for a Garth cartoon which ran for several weeks in the Daily Mirror, a U.K. national daily paper (great again). Then the Editor axed the series which had been running for 40 years! Another paper I wrote for closed immediately I did so (Gympie Life!). The actress Pauline Collins wanted to play the lead in a screen play of mine. For a variety of reasons, the key, most probably, the difficulty of obtaining appropriate finance, the project fell through (very sad). In the U.K. I turned a ₤2 million loss making business into profit in 3 months and so the owners sold it (they couldn’t before!) and I was made redundant (don’t be too successful!) Being jobless and over fifty no one wanted to know me (you too?). Needing to eat I drove a taxi. On one trip I was challenged by three pretty teenage girls to write a whodunit. The Treetop Murders was the result (We were driving up a steep wooded hill at the time.) It is selling (fantastic!).
I have been a Marine Radio Officer on the Queen Elizabeth and on other ships, a charity fundraiser for paraplegics, a Business Systems Analyst and programmer, a bread delivery salesman and I’m often involved in building projects, planning, bricklaying, wiring up and plumbing. D.I.Y is challenging, most projects are for the first time so I make many of the novice's first copy cost mistakes but what I get is what I want and not someone else's (maybe received or conditioned) views. Very satisfying; it is cheaper, too!
I was born in the U.K., living there until I married a second time. I now live in Queensland, Australia in 6 acres of long grass and tall gum trees amongst which I can often be found searching for golf balls. In between, as always, I continue to write and publish in various formats. I have to. I cannot help it.
back