Biography

Up a mountain in Silesia

  

The son of an ex German paratrooper and POW, I was born in Aberdeenshire, raised and educated in the West of Scotland and went on to study design at Glasgow School of Art. After a stint as a designer with the BBC and freelancing for independent film and theatre companies, I worked as a design lecturer in further education. I now write full time and live in Argyll overlooking Loch Awe.

     

I have had short stories, poems and creative non-fiction published in many Scottish literary magazines, and was featured in two recent short story anthologies. A reviewer of one anthology picked out my work for praise, saying that the main character’s reckless and ruinous attempt to secure academic promotion ‘provoked both empathy and dismay.’ I have been a finalist in five literary competitions and awarded highly commended in two. In August 2008 I gained a place on the MLitt Creative Writing course at Glasgow University and under the guidance of tutors Zoe Strachan, Elizabeth reader, Laura Marney and Michael Schmidt graduated in December 2009. While on the course, I learned through group tutorials to accept positive criticism and use it to refine and improve my writing.

   

Most days I get to my desk by 7.30 and work through to 12.30, and after lunch I  revise my output of the morning. There are days when I feel I achieve almost nothing, because I spend the afternoon erasing the meagre output of the morning, but I have managed to finish one novel Crossed Wires and have two others in first draft form. I was on the brink of a major offensive on literary agents and publishers when I received an email about the BWA Publishing Programme. I applied and was accepted on to the programme which aims to package, promote and find the right publisher for my novel. For more information on BWA and its programmes go to Links.