My story.

I work in an office, like so many other people, but my office is my own. My studio at home is just a plain room, but it is my personal space, and I love it. Here I can put on my music and escape into whatever it is that I am escaping into today. Now, for example, I am escaping into writing about myself, something that I do not find comfortable, but not everything in life is comfortable.

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At this point I am supposed to tell you about where I live, about my pets and my hobbies. Well, I have just finished reading quite a few such stories, looking for inspiration about what an author generally says about himself, so that I can conform and do likewise. To be honest, they bored me, and I simply didn’t believe half of them, so I am not going to do that. What you want to know is the person behind the written words, and that isn’t the person with the day job, the house, and the pets. It is the person inside my head when I am writing. Where do the words come from?

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I certainly did not like writing words when I was young, possibly because I am left-handed, yet was made to write with my right hand until the age of about eight, because that apparently is the correct way to write. As a result, I was not even taught how to hold a pen correctly, and I found writing difficult and painful, because I had not developed the necessary muscle control and coordination in my left hand that you learn during the early years. My writing was also hideous, a spiky mess, like a cardiogram of somebody in distress. I was embarrassed about my scribblings. Frustrated by this, I decided quite late in life to teach myself to write neatly, on paper, to learn what I should have been taught fifty years earlier. Now I prefer to write using a pencil rather than a keyboard for my first drafts.​

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I had thought, like many people, that one day I would like to try my hand, or keyboard, at writing a proper book, whatever that may mean. To actually start doing so required some sort of motivation that I simply did not have, until I was forced to take time off work, and do something relaxing. My life had become a little bit stressful, to put it mildly, and I was ordered to take some time off, and do something, anything, that was not related to work.

 

I made jam, because I had nothing better to do. Because I had no idea what I wanted to do. It was autumn, there were fruits to be found, so I made jam, even though I do not eat jam. While picking blackberries on a fine autumn day in a quiet place, to make more jam that I would end up giving away, my mind was free to wander, and I decided on impulse that I would finally have a go at writing that book. The first two words that I wrote down were those of the title, and it retains that title to this day:

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Oliver’s Voice.

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The story has changed almost beyond recognition from that first draft. I had no plan whatsoever, having never attempted a novel before. I just sat myself down, and I typed. Characters developed in my head, and they became so complex that I had to start writing down their stories. Their world became real, and that is where I lived while I was writing. When I had finished Oliver's Voice, and I had rewritten it so many times that I simply had to stop, I started another.

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The principal character who had emerged in that first story was not Oliver, it was David Hammond, and he simply didn’t work with Oliver’s Voice as the first book. That meant writing the second book as the first book. The story that came together would eventually be called The Gate in the Shadows. I then wanted to know what would become of David Hammond, so I wrote the next episode in his life, and that of Janet, his wife and soulmate. What emerged during the writing of Destruction of Faith didn’t quite fit with the first two books, so they were both rewritten yet again.

 

Over a period of more than ten years, I brought together a series of seven books that described David’s somewhat strange career from 2006 to 2023, by which time he wasn’t the same person who started out on a train to Scotland all those years ago. A life investigating other people’s hauntings can change your perspective of the world, and can force you to believe some things that you still don’t want to believe. Before writing any more books, I thought it might be a good idea to start publishing the growing collection that I already had, and while doing that, write about the life of Harold Godwinson. Yes, that Harold. Battle of Hastings Harold. Escape is not that easy however, so I am now also writing the eighth book about David's world. It is after all, the only way I will find out what happens to him next, and I am itching to get those words onto paper.

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So that is the story of me. If you want to read the story of David and Janet, click on the link below. If you want to read the full story of David and Janet, read from the beginning in The Gate in the Shadows. I would love you to become as intrigued by their world as I am, and to meet you there in the magical escapism of words. In theory, if everything goes according to plan, I should have the seven complete stories published by the end of 2025.