Welcome, and thank you for visiting my site.

 

I was one of the lucky ones: I earned a living from writing - mostly advertising copy, p.r. materials and free lance journalism, then commercial texts - but writing nevertheless. All landfill now, of course.

 

A mature student - (glance at the photos for confirmation) of the Open College of the Arts, the creative arts faculty of the Open University, I'm in the closing stages of submitting work for a BA (Hons) degree. 

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When I'm not writing I bake breads, enjoy wine, love scotch more than it loves me, and spend as much time as possible in, on or near sea, islands, ships. 

 

I'm a family person. Chris and I have been married for almost 50 years,  we have wonderful and talented off-spring and grand-offspring and recently (Dec '23) a great-grandson!  Happy days.

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Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No 1 is the soundtrack to my life, alongside Fleetwood Mac,. birdsong, random over-hearings, regional accents, Leonard Cohen, cathedral choirs, actors working with great scripts, lute music, cats purring, Dylan Thomas,  peals of church bells.   

 

As a child I lived in near Bristol zoo. Add the roar of hungry great cats and the cry of peacocks to my soundtrack - they make me feel at home.  

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As for my current writing - I relish testing ideas and work in the company of critical friends at Harlow Writers Workshop. My College Ttutors are simultaneously encouraging and demanding, as are my talented fellow students. 

 

I Killed an Angel, my first collection of short stories, is available on Kindle. . Various poems , short stories and flash fictions have been included in a number of anthologies.  I enjoy reading my prose and poetry to live audiences. You'd have to ask them if the pleasure is mutual, but nobody has been openy hostile so far. 

 

I recently completed a narrative prose poem, 'Story of water' based on the tragic loss of 27 migrant lives in November 2021, when their flimsy inflatable sank mid -Channel, whilst authorities on both coastlines delayed responding. Now I'm writing a second - this time based around the use of art therapy in paranoid schizophrenia. 

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I have a fully written novel, Wolvensong, in need of editing attention.  You will find more about that on my prose pages.

 

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