Writing is a compulsion and I should really seek treatment. But, as I enjoy the whole process (apart from marketing, rejections, typos, synopsis hell and query letter doubts, of course) I'll keep at it. My first positive influence, apart from my adoring mother, was a sexy English teacher called Stella who encouraged me to write, but mostly to read. Since we had no TV at the time, I read the entire contents of the library in my home town (Hessle) and have continued to read all my life. Authors I have enjoyed are various and diverse; Graham Green, John Fowles, William Horwood, William Golding, Stephen King, Ray Bradbury, Iris Murdoch and Aldous Huxley spring to mind but they are just a few of those who have entered my consciousness. The sudden death of my mother when I was 16, just before crucial school exams, meant I performed miserably and left school instead of continuing education. A spell in the RAF told me I wasn't for the world of the unimaginative, and a short spell working in an art college re-ignited my creative spirit. I won't bore you with the trip from there, except to say I first published illustrated photographic articles in my late teens and didn't turn to fiction until my late 20s. Since then I've had some small success, which has been interrupted by spells of serious illness, domestic upsets and life in general. Only relatively recently have I been able to concentrate more fully on doing the writing I want to do. I retired from employment last April (2013) and now write full time. With 7 self-published books, my fanytasy trilogy, A Seared Sky, and 2 sciience fiction novels now published by Fantastic Books Publishing, I'm enjoying life as a writer as I work on the second in a series of novels set on Mars. 

Won 3 prizes for short stories in Writers' Forum Magazine, some other small contest awards also.