About

My journey as a writer/author/poet started sometime in the early 1980’s when as a young Royal Marine, I wrote articles for our in house journal, the Globe and Laurel.  Isolated on a small frigate, away from Commando life, I wrote of our time at sea, the challenges that we faced and the unique places that we were fortunate to visit.

For the following thirty years; nothing beyond the formal written instructions to a workforce or the scribbling in a greeting card came from the nib of my pen.  Then something strange happened.  Feeling at a low ebb and in a moment of solitude, I went to the cinema and watched a film called The Way, about the Camino de Santiago in Northern Spain.  I was enthralled and inspired.  Three months later I got of a train in St Jean Pied de Port and followed in the footsteps of that films protagonist.

That journey of 31 days constant walking opened up something within.  I started to write poetry and produced detailed line drawings of church doors, dilapidated buildings and café tables strewn with pilgrim detritus.  This creativity left me staring at the wide expanse of the Bay of Biscay on my journey home wondering where I was going so late in life.

I started writing for pleasure, dreaming up improbable storylines and writing them out, longhand in hardbacked A4 notebooks.  But the daily grind of the real world got in the way. The distraction of running a business, caring for elderly parents to a greater degree every day and giving time to family pushed the writing into a poor fourth place.  I needed space and in the blink of an eye it seemed to arrive.  Children left home, Parents passed and the business went to my son leaving me all the time I needed to write. 

It was still not quite enough.  I need things to be going on around me.  Splendid isolation is great, necessary even, but I needed a guide.  I found it in applying for a place on a Creative Writing degree at the University of Plymouth (UoP).  Armed with my meagre handful of CSE’s and optimism I was accepted onto a Foundation year based lifetime experience and the firsts three chapters of one of my manuscripts.  That fictionalised version of one of the many pilgrimage walks I have undertaken, was sufficient to convince Dr Ryan Sweet that I could write and was worthy of a place.

The four years that I spent at UoP refined, honed, improved that which I could already do.  It also introduced me to so much more.  Ancient tracts and why they are important, The many different styles of poetry, what is important in non-fiction short stories and how to write a screen play or script.

By the time I graduated with a first class honours, I finally felt equipped to call myself a writer.  Surrounded by other aspiring scribblers I find myself challenged on an almost daily basis to write, compose, create and my intention now is to do that every day, for myself and for you.  So:

If you have a project you need to lay out in written form, if you need a script, straight laced or humorous, ancient or modern thematically, If you need a speech; drop me a line, lets see if I can meet your expectations.  I have also discovered that I have a knack for interviewing and currently, I record and produce podcasts for the Arts Institute and their Made in Plymouth website and social media outlets where I interview Plymouth based creatives on their latest works.