It actually makes me smile, just writing that title! I never thought I would be an author, but having now written two novels, and with a third in the pipeline, I suppose I am going to have to start believing it.
In some ways, I wish I had started to write earlier; I was always one of those people who felt they had a book inside them, but did nothing about it. There is something in me now however that feels that it wouldn’t have worked before. I was never really ready to write until now.
I will spare you my entire autobiography but, essentially, I was trained as a physicist and worked in science all my life. I took early retirement at the age of fifty seven – that now seems a long time ago!
I have always had a wide range of hobbies. Individual interests have come and gone over time, but have included: owning and flying a light aircraft, Morris dancing, wildlife photography, an electronics repair business, learning French, oil painting – and so on! I still dance with a Morris team and am now a passionate volunteer for the Repair Café movement: plus I am still studying French.
So, unavoidably I suppose, all of this has contributed what I now feel able to write. However, what I have actually written has come as a complete surprise to me!
The process of writing fiction is something I’d never experienced before. The plots were very tricky to construct and hold together as the story developed. I was always aware of that and spent many hours and days either completely stuck, or advancing piecemeal into the story. The characters, their interactions and their words however just flowed out of them without any conscious effort on my part. That was a real surprise: a delight too!