I never wanted to be a writer. I wanted to be a punk rock musician. So, during night shifts behind the bales of jute in the run down corrugated iron factory, where I worked at sixteen, I wrote punk rock lyrics. 

          We had never really been pushed to read at my school. Only one year we had a good teacher who introduced us to Orwell and Barry Hines and Alan Sillitoe. These guys I liked, all the other classic literary writers bored me senseless. But these guys wrote about things like my life. They wrote kitchen sink working-class stories, things I could relate to.

         I couldn’t relate to Virginia Wolfe or E. M. Forster or the Bronte’s’. What World did these people live in? Certainly not mine.

         I later discovered that the US had all these cool writers like Kerouac and Bukowski and Steinbeck. And I loved these guys. So through meeting weird people during my punk days, hipsters I suppose we would call them now, through the underground alternative community, I discovered writing and writers I liked and could relate to.

          In the meantime, my own writing trip had begun. I was writing reviews of gigs. Pamphlets on politics to give out at gigs. And the more political I got involved the more political articles I wrote. We started an Unemployed union and we produced a little 6-page magazine; hand-designed with clips and glue and articles and hand-printed on an old off-set printer we cranked by hand (Jesus how old am I? Sounds like something from the Paris commune!)

          After being politically active for some years I got a bit disillusioned and decided to up sticks and go off travelling. Well, travelling and going to live in various countries.

Paris, Barcelona, Brazil never got me writing but got me drinking and meeting characters and having adventures I later used a lot in my short stories.

          I started writing travel bits. I tried to write for the guide books, but reviewing was never really my thing. Then I wrote some auto-fiction travel pieces about my adventures in Africa and there I found a style I liked.

          Returning to the UK I decided to do some creative writing courses…one with the Workers education association. This was great, 2 hour class a week but with a published author who got us writing all sorts of stuff. I started to turn my auto-fiction into more just fiction based on experiences and stories I had accumulated over the years; about the characters and places I had met during my travels and looking back to the punk lifestyle and the lives of the working-class people I knew.

          I then did a more serious course with the Open College of Arts; a correspondence course. This really taught me a lot about style, and plot building etc.

          I had my first auto-story published funnily enough by the US underground magazine Thieves Jargon, about twenty years ago. It was one of the first new online mags around. The story was about my experience in a Czech drink tank and mental hospital. I then did some more work for them, my second story about a Czech gypsy girl and how she fought for a better life; a subject I write about a lot.

          I sent more stuff off to other mags and people really liked my style which I would say is dirty realism. I write about the underbelly of society and the experiences of ordinary working-class people.

I shoved together a load of essays and opinion pieces with some stories into a kind of travel book. It got published but the publisher was crap so I self-published and it sold well.

          I got involved with online writers groups and had a lot of contacts with magazine editors and other writers.

Having this online presence helped me with sales of my books. And myself and some other writers set up Jotters united writers group after the original writers group Jottify got shut down.

          We started as a facebook group (And still are) where we share news, opportunities and push each other’s work. We then went to a monthly online magazine called Jotters United. We produced about 30 issues and over 130 writers over a number of years. I enjoyed being an editor and designer, but it got to be very time consuming so we have let it lie for a while, while we get down to writing our own stuff; but I may go back to producing it, at some point.

         I then did a poetry book, just to get it out of my system I think...I had all these lyrics lying around and thought, shit turn them into poetry and put a book out.

         The last ten years I have concentrated on my short stories, which I enjoy writing and complements my style I think…

short and sharpe.

          I have one collection out which was well received and I ventured into the writing of a Novella called Punk Novelette. The length of the book again suited my style.

         I have no great desire to write a novel, I am happy with short fiction.

My first short story collection was about the underclass, lowlife world of drug addicts and freaks. The one I am editing now I wanted to be more positive, so it is still about ordinary people but about their struggles and lives and all political to some extent; but in a positive way. The Working class win for a change!

         Not sure what I will do next. I’m thinking maybe crime. I like to read crime stories for relaxation and I’ve read a lot of it. So, maybe I can run my hand to that, we will see. I never push the writing process; I wait for the inspiration to find me.