Tales

I define myself as a writer; I write.

What I write, depends on mood and my available ideas. Whether they want to play nicely or not. Sometimes, my characters work better when they don't want to co-operate. I may have figured out a story where "A" happens, then "B" happens and then "C" happens.

My character just looks out of the page at me, shaking their head, saying, "Yeah, right. Do you think I'm an idiot?? There's no way in the world I'll let "B" happen."

By this time, I'll usually have grown closer to them, how they may react, respond, behave. And when they push back on what I want them to do, it means I have given them human qualities and limits. Often that's the point where the story lifts.

An example - I was writing a teenage girl and her Dad asks her to research former F1 driver turned parathlete, Alex Zanardi. She innocently responds : "Alex, who's she?" This helps show the nature of the relationship between father and daughter, where he encourages her to study strong women and her "who's she?" response is characteristic and unsurprising to the father.

So I hope that when I write, I write about people, the human experience. Something universal, or something we can relate to. At time of writing this page, I have written :
* Novels (No Man's Land; Don't You Know Who I Am?)
* Novellas (A Change of Heart; Noir is the Old Black - Nicky the Needle Gets Pinned; Absolute Knowledge; Home Inversion; ...)
* Short Stories (Big C; Time and Again; No Returning; Premonition; Many dozens more; ...)
* Flash Fiction - Under 100 words (Altitude Sickness; Rincess; ...)
* A Feature Screenplay (Left for Dust)
* A produced Short Film (Fail)
* Short Film Screenplays (It Goes Without Saying; Bad Blood; ...)
* Poems (Scarlett the Harlot; the Gluggs Lagerton Series; There Once Was a Man From Your Town;
Conference Confidantes; ...)
* Song Lyrics (Toni's Kebabs; ...)
* Kids Stories (Quiet in the Back Seat Series)
* Picture Books (Sammy Makes Mummy Proud)
* Essays (Tipping the Scales (or Justice is a Dish Best Served on Silver Service); Ex(patriate) Marks the Spot)

And all my own material whenever I have done stand-up comedy.

My favourite authors are (in no particular order) : Nick Earls, Ben Elton, Michael Crichton, Lee Child.

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