I’m a full-time, British Indie Author, publishing Fantasy, Sci-fi and Post-Apocalyptic novels mainly within the LitRPG GameLit genre.

Born and bred in the North East of England, a stone’s throw from the rugged coastline of the North Sea. It’s a place full of history, from Pagan stone circles to Roman forts that feed the imagination.

I live with my wife, children, a miniature Yorkie, Hugo and 2 Chartreux cats: Nana Pebbles and her granddaughter, Freya.

Not many people read round my way when I was younger, but my dad, a plasterer, was keen to get me into it.

He tried multiple ways and generally failed.

Then I got grounded for a few days during the summer holidays of ’93, and because there was literally nothing else to do when you were stuck in your room without a computer or TV back then, I picked up one of the books he’d bought me.

It was a Point Sci-Fi book. First Contact, ironically.

I devoured it. Then another. By the end of the year I’d read Asimov’s Foundation series, amongst others. The year after, I read Lord of the Rings and, more questionably, The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant.

Then I found Legend by David Gemmell, and much later Joe Abercrombie, and discovered I most enjoyed books with characters that felt real to me. Damaged but determined. Angry but also funny. In other words, bastards with a good heart and a willingness to graft in the face of impossible odds, because what is life but a series of impossible odds that need breaking down into manageable pieces?

When I started writing myself, I just wanted to play. I was younger then, before raising a family and doing a grueling job crushed most of the creativity out of me. My life became work, dinner, beer, sleep, six days a week, with some time for the family on a Sunday.

Even then, I was so tired and drained, they were only getting the shell of the man I was.

When a little free time opened up and I decided to give it another go, I learned from my earlier efforts. Constant revising, doubting, changing things before I’d even written ten chapters. I’d inevitably fail.

This time I would at least complete a full story without looking back. No edits or revisions. Just writing from start to finish. I wrote in notepads and mainly on my phone, fitting it in wherever I could. Break time. Bedtime. And yes, on the toilet.

I was inspired by all the fantasy I’d read, and by a more recent discovery of LitRPG, but by that stage I’d also spent twenty years as a plasterer, and I’d learned a lot from that too. So I went into it with a different perspective. One of grafting to get over the line. I also wrote it for myself rather than writing something I thought other people wanted to read.

I wrote about tired, broken people. The main character was an out-of-work roofer with weight issues and mental health issues.

Sounds like a drag, huh?

Quite honestly, it was. And it is.

But who in that position doesn’t wish something would come along and take it all away? A magic wand. A second chance. A way back to a healthier, happier place where you can start again.

That story was Condition Evolution.

It was fast-paced because I wrote it fast. A 50k first draft, mostly on my phone and in an old notepad, in around three weeks.

When I got to the very rough end, I was ecstatic. I’d finally completed something.

A story, and one I loved.

We invested in a PC so I could edit properly. My wife helped me a ton. Then, when it wasn’t really ready, I said feck it and published it on Amazon with a badly drawn cover.

To our surprise, it did okay.

There were editing issues and some mocking jibes about the cover, but we made a bit of money from it and I’d already started the second book to keep the flame burning. Instead of releasing that, I pulled the first one down, did a little rewrite, paid for professional editing, and got a professional cover from 99designs.

The rest, as they say, is history.