Life offers so many influences, even the bad experiences become the backdrop to what falls into the filing cabinate of your brain. It is those influences that have shaped my writing. I grew up as a child where a lot of imagination was fed through radio, like listening to BBC's output, it was fantastic. Shows like 'Journey Into Space', 'The Goon Show' , it was all stimulating those brain cells, heaven knows what effect it was having on the outside. My influences were perhaps from the less known writers, the script writers of those radio shows were spoon feeding me with a way of thinking. But Nina Bawden did make me think more about writing, I love her characters, their mannerisims, as in Carries War. Also Spike Milligan, now he gave me the liberty to not be told that what I was doing was rubbish, that this is the right way, when I was thinking outside of the square box. So you get dummed down from education, however, if you are born outside of 'The Box' you stay outside, you learn to make it work, and if its funny, you laugh yourself. Now all those factors stay in the filing cabinate, as it is the characters you store pop out of your head as and when needed. Sometimes I have to say, 'Forgive me, do I know you?', for I really have no idea where they spring from, they just appear. The trouble is when I finish a writing, those same characters do not go away, I feel guilty that I have not anything more to say about them. or that I may have left them unemployed. Everyday there are characters knocking at my door they are of my thoughts some clear some obscure, where do I begin do I let them in allow them a line something to say alright maybe. I recall the names that passed through that door the hero's the villans on many a page, like Jack Thatcher maybe he is still on Mars or Dribble the Westie running like mad Even Nelson the one eyed LIon  in Togetherland. So keep knocking I am sure I'll let you in so long as I can I'll keep writing as long as I may.  

Seeing my first book in print, THEORYTHUM THE PEOPLE OF THE FIELD.
Becoming a runner up in a songwriting competition.