The Rowlings Years...: Wood, Talc And Mr. J: We Never Had It So Good... (The Rowlings Years, Book 1) (ePub)

Born and bred in the city of steel: Sheffield.

Spent - or misspent, whichever your viewpoint - the majority of his 'young' years on the Northern Soul circuit. It's around this time and place that his novel is set - 'Wood, Talc and Mr. J: We never had it so good...'

His academic education came much later, from scratch, in a sense.

In time, he fell in love with the idea of languages, French in particular, and went on to get a BA Hons in French Language and Literature with subsidiary Spanish, at The University of Sheffield. He was a 'mature student', though maybe not as mature as he would like to think, looking back...

After which, he moved down south - mid 90s - and eventually further still to the South of France for a few years, where he taught English. He then moved up to northern France to do much the same thing.

But it was here where he also began to write, or experiment with writing.

He came back to England in the mid-00s and lived in North London for five years, teaching and writing again.

And for the last so many years, he's lived in Norwich, where he's completed a Masters in Literary Translation, at the UEA - he likes to believe he's most definitely mature now!

He's now working his way toward making a living by writing, with a little translation on the side...

He tends to be picky about books, and take his time reading them; he expects each word to count; something he can go back to, read again - and again. Things witty, satirical, poetic... Moving. Favourite writers of late? Maybe Markas Zusak. Anna Funder, her 'All That I Am'. Actually, he's only just discovered Kurt Vonnegut, and read 'The Slaughterhouse Five'. All that being said, he is a bit of a Conan-Doyle fanatic...

Soulful writers, and their soulful things. And maybe he tries to emulate them.

Same goes for his taste in films, music... and people.