Once upon a time –a long time ago – I was born in Bootle (Liverpool 20) in the UK. There was a war on. Later, I wanted to follow in the footsteps of J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis but instead was plunged into the maelstrom of inner city education. In the 1970s I wrote some stories for children to see if I could, and Penguin published them. I thought I would write something really good when I retired from teaching…
After fourteen years of headship in Hackney I came back up north in 1993 and met my wonderful wife Amy. We looked after my increasingly ill parents full-time until they didn't need us to do it anymore, by which time the first of our two daughters was ready to go off to University and on to the first rung of the housing ladder. We did the sums and I went back to teaching…
In 2008 Amy and I set off for a life by the western shores of the Caribbean. It was only after I survived a murder attempt by three local thugs in November 2010 (skull crushed in two places, seventeen stitches in head wounds) that I realised how easy it is to die without accomplishing a cherished ambition.
So we came back to the UK and I set to work on "Myrddin's Heir": the epic story I will leave behind. It took three years to write the first four books - now in the Kindle Store at 99p each. Self-publishing means self-marketing, so here I am. Book 5 was published in April 2014 for the same price…
This is a story for bright children from 10–110 years of age. It's longer than The L of the R, longer even than HP &… To finish it I need to live another 15 years. I'd like to finish it, because I know how it ends.