My first story was about pirates. I was nine years old. By that time I had been reading everything I could lay my hands on from Rupert Bear to Midshipman Easy.
My first writing success came when I broadcast a talk on Woman's hour on the BBC in 1962. I went on to do about 25 more broadcasts until I moved further away from the London area.
I also had a great many educational articles accepted in the professional press before being asked by a publisher to write a Teachers' book on handwriting.
On my thirteenth birthday, I happily skipped downstairs and declared that as I was now a teenager, I could do whatever I wanted. “Oh, really?” said my sceptical mother, who then wanted to know what exactly I intended to do. I said the first thing which entered my head, which was to announce that I was going to become a rock star. “In that case,” replied Mum, trying not to smirk, “you’d better go and write some songs, hadn’t you—after you’ve finished your chores.”
And this is exactly what I did. With two school friends, I formed a (very awful) band. Between us we had a kazoo and two guitars, one of which had a broken neck. When our crashing lack of musical talent thundered in our ears, our band was laid to merciful rest. However, I continued writing song lyrics which quickly transformed into poetry.
When aged seventeen, I joined Leigh Writers Workshop. This small group of writers used to meet monthly in LAMP Bookshop in Leigh, Lancashire, and was then chaired by Jackie Cottam. Soon after this, my first poem was published in “Pipes of Pan”.
After leaving college, at the age of eighteen, my first job was as Editor for “The Birchwood Guidebook”. I then began experimenting with writing fiction.
I have read constantly since childhood, when favourite books included Richard Bach’s “Jonathon Livingston Seagull” and Gerald Durrell’s “My Family and Other Animals.” As a teenager, my reading list veered more towards GI Gurdjieff and PD Ouspensky. Books on folklore, ancient history and civilisations, and philosophy have always been with me. As an adult, I probably read an average of forty-five books each year—some non-fiction, some fiction. The fiction is mostly Fantasy, Horror and Science-Fiction.   | | |
For many years I have been a professional writer and author of technical books and journals. It has only been in the fairly recent past that I have turned my hand to fiction. My first book, Killer Email, was published by Pegasus Elliott MacKenzie in 2008. My next book, Killer Freemason, is due to be launched in 2009.
From about the age of three, I used to sit on my father's knee and he would read to me from one of his westerns.
My early experiences were from authors like Louis Lamour and J T Edson.
My graddfather was also an avid reader and taught me to write. By the time I started school at four years old I could read and write.
I started writing little stories at about the age of six or seven and I used my toy sewing machine to sew the pages together and make them up into little books.
I started to write as a hobby, had no intention of seeing my writing in print but it was friends and family which really drove me on to seek an agent/publisher. But first my own insecurities got in the way and I sought the advice of a critique specialist which I highly recommend doing. They reviewed the manuscript and gave an opinion on plot, style, storyline, charaterisation etc. My first book 'The Vision of Aquinas' was published through Troubador in 2006.
My earliest recollection of reading was the Green Pirate and the White Pirate and then Black and Red...oh not that early....The Bolitho Series by Alexander Kent.
Having led a very busy life, I am what you would call a late entry into the artistic world of writing.
Always having had a vivid imagination. I was always searching for the unbelievable and making it a reality.
I semi-retired, married and immigrated to the USA in 2005 (My, that was a busy year) I just couldn't adjust to a relaxed lifestyle. What can I do to keep my mind occupied? That was the question that constantly plagued my mind, a question that was only answered on the birth of a new family member. I was to write a children's book, something I could read to little Maddie when she stayed over.
After 50 years on this planet, everything now slotted into place!
The first book I can ever remember reading was The Frogs, what a fantastic book!
I began writing as a child, simple poems, then at school found I was writing essays the teachers wanted to read. I seriously began to write in 1979 and from then my writing career has blossomed.
I started writing seriously around five years ago, a bit of poetry, but mainly short stories.
The redoubtable Enid Blyton got me both reading and writing.
I found a story. Of course I scribbled in an amateur sort of way before I ever found the story that I simply had to write, but it was all scribbles until I stumbled upon a passage in The Glass Bead Game by Herman Hesse. He described the passing of 'The Music Master' in a way that made my mind jolt and sparked a ripple of curiosity that eventually led to Music of Maninjau, my first novel. At the same time as reading this epic tale of glass bead intellectualism, I was learning guitar from a Thai man called Goong. The two inspirations fed off one another and I started researching music from every angle I could, devouring any text i could find that blurred the boundary between music and philiosophy, or physics, or maths, or medicine... anything. I jumped into musicology and the historical accounts of where music came from, what early civilisations thought it was all about, how it developed, how the theory of why it works developed. And then when I was least expecting it, i rediscovered a character that everyone would recognise from the history books, someone that led such a fractured and elusive life that I could mould my delightful fictiona round his skeleton without contradicting 'what really happened'. And I stand by it - of course its fiction, but there's no way of proving it is! There's no way of proving the so-called historical accounts because they're all at odds with each other. This character is a myth, and myths evolve. I liked that. A lot. Anyway, to answer the first question, I was driven.
What did I first read? No idea. A book with very big words, probably two or three on each page with lots of pictures. | | |
I have read the Bible from an early age.
At night school, whilst improving my GCSE grade, I realised the fun of doing poetry.
I sent lots of emails to Dorrance publishing and they encouraged me to add more content.
They then recommended a subsidiary publisher called RoseDog books.
I paid the fees for print on demand publishing.
I began to write professionally when "The Malt Whisky File" was first published in 1989. A number of drinks trade journals then asked me to contribute and it grew from there. I now contribute to consumer publications as well as trade journals, offering styles of articles varying from entry level to specialist.
I first read - probably nursery rhymes. I was a voracious reader as a child, with a grandmother who claimed that "you'll read your brains into train oil!" To this day, I have never discovered the derivation of the phrase.
I started writing (poetry) when I was about 11 and moved onto writing fiction about 2 years ago, when I began work on a novel; I've since shelved this and have moved onto writing short stories to enable me to learn the basics of the craft of writing, though I don't especially think that writing has to be 'learnt'.
Writing should come from the heart and soul of the writer and I have read quite a lot of bilge that, though written with technique - lacks conviction and depth.
The first writer I remember reading was Walter de la Mare, as I loved poetry as a child and still do.
I began to write as a child as, being very shy, I found it enabled me to express myself and my inner voice.
I was taught to read in rural Ireland by my mother before I went to school. I used to get into her bed and she was always reading a book. I would ask her what each word on the page was and she would point to them and tell me. Very quickly I found that I could read. When I went to infant school and other people were being taught to read I was bored and disruptive, so the nuns (who were the teachers) came up with the idea of letting me sit at the back and write a story while the reading classes were going on. I was then allowed to read some of them out to the class. I felt very proud if they liked the story. I think that was what started me off writing. I haven't stopped since.
I wrote a lot while i was at school. I made up basic science fiction stories after being inspired by the Doctor Who books and later at college by Ray Bradbury.he had a profound affect upon me at age sixteen. I never knew anyone could write so beautifully and imaginatively at the same time. Although he inspired me he also frightened me off now i think about it. I was easily discouraged at that age and it seemed impossible to me then that i could get anywhere near that sort of standard. I still think that now somedays. |
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