About Me

I’ve been an author since the age of four, when I started writing stories about a talking horse called Stephen Trotter. By the time I left school, I’d settled on fantasy as my genre, and some of the stories I began and characters I created at that age are still working themselves out.

An early success was a story in The Thirteenth Fontana Book of Great Horror Stories, but publication opportunities for fiction were sparse then. Instead, I had a good deal more success with poetry during the 80s and 90s.

I performed my poetry at numerous venues around London and beyond, often accompanied by my own prerecorded backing music — which I used to introduce as The Invisible Band. I spent a good deal of my time at Bunjies Coffee House, a “beatnik” hangout from the 50s and 60s, where artists such as Paul Simon, Al Stewart, David Bowie and Bob Dylan once performed.

From the 2000s onward, though, the fiction publications started to gather pace, firstly for token payments, but later often professional rates. My novel At An Uncertain Hour was published by StoneGarden in 2009 (I self-published a 2nd edition when StoneGarden closed) and I’ve had a series of shorter ebooks out from various publishers. My collection Eltava: A Sword for All Ages was published in 2021.

Most of my work tends to fall loosely in the epic fantasy or sword & sorcery genres (though I love to mix things up a little) but I’ve tried my hand at everything from science fiction to surrealism, comedy to “flintpunk” (my name for a kind of dystopian Flintstones-like setting). Lately, I’ve tried my hand at “drabble”, which is a complete story in exactly 100 words.

I’ve belonged to a number of writers’ groups through the years. Since 2004, my main group has been www.fantasy-writers.org, an online group dedicated to peer review and help for fantasy writers, which I help to run.

Through all this, I had a series of jobs, ranging from bookselling to residential care work, working for McDonalds to being an artist’s model. Since 2014, I’ve been self-employed as a freelance copywriter.

I live in Hertfordshire (that’s just north of London, for non-Brits) and take an interest in the history of my county, which has recently combined with my love of folk music in a series of songs about the history and mythology of Hertfordshire. I also sing and play percussion (especially the djembe) — but only to enthusiastic amateur level.

History in general is my other great passion — classical Greece and mediaeval Europe are favourite periods, but I’ve recently been trying to learn more about the great civilisations (such as China and India) that tend to be ignored by Eurocentric history. Quite apart from the sheer love, it can be invaluable for creating fantasy worlds.

So, now you’ve got to know me a little, why not find out more about my worlds, my characters and my stories. I hope you have fun.