When I was working as a solicitor, I was employed for some years in Bloxwich and used to appear regularly in Walsall and Birmingham county courts. When the Walsall Writers Circle published their 50 th anniversary book on Walsall I wrote a slightly fictionalised account of my day in court applying for a matrimonial injunction just before Christmas. There always seemed to be an outbreak of matrimonial discord just before “the festive season”.
It was often not very “festive” for the legal profession with so much to be done before it by way of frantic court work, often meaning that the office lunch or festivities were missed.
I’ve always been writing, mostly for my own amusement from an early age. Then, around seven years old I discovered “Dan Dare, Pilot of the Future” in the Eagle and thereafter swiftly moved on to Asimov ( Foundation Trilogy), Wyndham ( Day of the Triffids et al) Orwell ( 1984 ) and Waugh ( Brave New World ).
As a relief from the grind of non-creative law exams and courses I wrote my first novel – a sort of -Tolkien parallel world fantasy- from which the agent pinched the lever arch file and sent it back in a brown paper parcel.
It was followed by a comedy drama about a talking dog set in Wales ( “Don’t like talking animal stories” said one agent – I forbore to mention that Richard Adams had done rather well out of Watership Down and The Plague Dogs ) Finally, I met someone who was (secretly) the English commissioning editor for a Welsh publisher and my first novel The Janus Effect, a time travel paradox, was published.
My second novel The Xandra Function – a love story tied up with a cutting-edge computer game, involving murder and big business, has just been published by the same publisher, Ylolfa of Talybont, Mid Wales.
