• This Writing Journey

    The Novel Dream

    I wanted to write a novel. I wanted to create my own fantasy epic. But I was only 15 and had no idea what I was doing, so all my planning consisted of was buying an A5 exercise book. (I was at my parents’ last week and scrounging around in the garage looking for something else entirely, and actually found the exercise book – right.) I’d stay up nights, pumping myself full of cups of tea and cigarettes, scribbling away while one of the midnight music shows of the time, like Rage, played in the background. The exercise book (and its successor) even accompanied me when my parents took me…

  • This Writing Journey

    Writing ~ The Very Beginning

    Lately, I’ve been thinking about my writing journey – well, more than usual. When you get to a point in your “career”, and you’ve struggled to make a meaningful impact, you think about the choices you’ve made, and what makes you the writer you are – or perhaps a better way of putting that is not the writer you’d hoped to be. So I thought I’d chronologise my writing life, and be totally honest about it. In my head right now, that means some of it won’t be pretty. Growing up, one of my older brothers got me into reading. It started with Dennis the Menace and Peanuts comics. Three-…