I haven’t always loved writing. At school it was something the teachers told me to do - so I did it, with only the merest hint of skill.

At age 18 or thereabouts, I started my first serious work following a break up with a girl form Shrewsbury who had found better things to do. “Maybe Tomorrow” told the story of a young lad with a broken heart who packed his belongings into his Mini and fled his home, his job and his life. I never finished it and now, as I write, it’s sitting in a box in the loft, covered in dust, waiting to be picked up again.

For the last 13 years I’ve been a largely disillusioned and unfocussed financial adviser, working long, unsociable hours with often, unsociable clients who would rather have been doing anything else other than talking to me. My spare time has been limited but, since around 1996, I’ve filled at least some of it with writing a series of essays about my love of fishing and the countryside in general. “This Pool of Dreams” is finished, though not all typed and, there’s not a week that passes where I couldn’t add another tale, or another experience to it.

In 1997 something happened during a normal day in a normal office that lodged in my memory and made me think ‘…there’s got to be a book in that.’ I put down half a page of A4 notes, shoved it in a file and proceeded to forget about it for 3 years until I discovered my scrawled notes, sat down and started to write.

What appeared towards the end of 2002 was “A Fall of Stone”, a 2 part story of a financial adviser embroiled in a fraud and a series of events that changes his life forever. The first part is set in Wolverhampton, the second on the Isle of Skye. Like “This Pool of Dreams,” it was written in my spare time, usually in pubs during the day, was totally un-plotted and turned from a basic idea for a ‘chase novel’ into a 330 page, 125,000 word piece of work that has now been described as “…a real page turner of a thriller,” “…Skye’s answer to Captain Corelli’s Mandolin” and “…the first book that’s ever made me cry.”

Totally self-financed, the book’s final appearance in print has been made all the sweeter by the fact that I was made redundant on the 14th of November 2003.

Originally from Lower Gornal, I now live in Wolverhampton with my wife, Max. When not writing (I suppose I’m technically self employed or unemployed now) I enjoy photography, fishing and being out in the wild open spaces that never fail to fuel my imagination. I’m currently 50,000 words into my next book, a rather dark story told by a man driving north on the M6. A man with “serious issues” regarding the world in general and some rather unique ways of dealing with them. I hope to have this finished by Autumn 2004.

And what of my first, unfinished book? I have no definite plans to complete it, but who knows, maybe tomorrow.