I believe that I have always been a writer, from a young age it is all that I ever really wanted to do, but life and circumstances were against me for many years. At school I only excelled in Spelling and English Language, I never really liked the other subjects apart from some History. As I got older and left school the travel bug also hit me, other cultures and my natural empathy created some of the situations that contributed to that love. I gravitated in my work life to jobs where there was at least some form of writing whether it was in the form of letters, or reports, or official statements, and then again working on international construction and engineering projects included the travel side. Over the years I had friends tell me that writing was what I should be doing and my many stories and adventures while overseas flowered many a pub conversation. I am a natural “Bar Fly” and that sociability also led me into jobs where entertaining, wining & dining were also required. I have always been an avid reader, I soak up literature of many types during my travels, in fact, my luggage used to carry more books than clothes at times and the advent of e.readers or Kindle have certainly made my bags much lighter. Over the years I have written in long hand or on old typewriters and usually thrown manuscripts away as imperfect. Nowadays, with the advent of ever smaller laptops and better word processing programmes, I find that I can write two stories at a time and this suits my sometimes split personality in the same way that I can read more than 1 book at a time.

My early life is not unlike Barry Parker’s in “The Dream Team”, in fact I had the main plot of Dream Team in my head for nearly 20 years but couldn’t work out how to get the main character to where I wanted him, until I started a dialogue by e.mail with another author, “Vanessa Wu” who writes some beautiful erotic stories, she gave me a few suggestions and encouragement and from then on I was on a roll. I used personal experiences, memories and observations wherever I went and my writing just wouldn’t stop, it was as if 30 or 40 years of bottled up stories just flowed. Most of the characters in “DreamTeam” are based on people I have met or watched but the book versions of them are purely works of fiction.

I have lived and worked or visited many countries throughout the Middle East, Africa and Asia and this has given me an insight into many different cultures and the goings on in those places, usually based in the seamier side of town and viewed from a variety of bars and restaurants.

Many of the happenings in “The Dream Team” are in some way related to my business dealings over many years and, perhaps, my own revenge at the officialdom and the established order in the UK. The system in many countries is geared to, and laws are formed, around elites who naturally hang on to their power and make statutes to suit themselves and their class. This happens, probably more than anywhere else in the world, in the UK, and keeps the rest of us down, unless we went to the right schools or have the right connections.

Those of us in the sixties & seventies who rebelled against the established order won some hard fought freedoms, but we need to fight even harder these days to ensure that our kids don’t lose sight of that. We must keep the liberality of the Woodstock children and the Mod’s & Rockers, Punks or Hippies challenging the new puritans, the conservatives who wish to take us back to the dark ages of control.

If you go to a rock festival now it is controlled, you have to buy your drinks from a franchise, you get searched, or some sniffer dogs are looking for your dope! Society has closed in on you and you must fight for the freedom to do and create what you believe in. My writing is always about the freedom to be different, whatever you wish to be, you should be.