I am often asked why I started later in life to write, and it’s a good question that I am not sure I always answer correctly.

One of the benefits of being a writer is that I get to ponder a great many things. Whilst working on Heirs to the Kingdom, I have had a very broad canvass on which to throw my thoughts and speculate, and then using a little creative licence, I have had the opportunity to create elements of life and living in a completely manufactured world and scenario.

When I first began to write, I had to decide whether or not this world I created for my characters was going to appear real (As in based on the world today) or imaginary. I chose to use a world created on the basis of the real world today, and to some that may have appeared limiting, after all, a completely imaginary and fabricated world would have given me greater scope for something utterly fantastical. In a fabricated world I could have expanded my imagination to its limits, and I have to confess I do have a strong desire to write something completely manufactured at some point.

But here is the crux of the deal, this world actually presents as equally as wide a canvass to write about. I understand that may appear odd at first, but if you read the kind of books I do, then very quickly you will understand that this current world in which we live has so many mysteries and riddles that we cannot solve, that it provides a doorway into which we can take our imagination and expand out many different scenarios and theories.

Take for instance subjects such as Ghosts, Magic, Witches, Faith, ESP, Alternative Medicine, Meditation, The Bermuda Triangle, UFO’s, History, and dare I even mention Archaeology?

It’s a curious list, and yet in these times of our so called modern advancement in science, we still have many unanswered questions about the validity of many things. Science says if it cannot be proven then it cannot be accepted, and yet every single item within the scientific community that we all accept as fact, is but a theory until someone comes along to disprove it.

For a writer that is simply a loaded gun waiting to be fired, we can wander inside our minds and expand anything using the theory of its true until proved otherwise as raw material just waiting to be given a basis for reality, and I personally have been delighted to do exactly that.

I was once visited by the husband of a reader who wanted to purchase the latest book, and as we sat chatting as it turned out he was an old friend from work, he asked me. “How do you do it?” Meaning how the guy he once worked with could, (who he had no idea was a secret writer,) create this world of fantasy that his wife had become quite involved with. I could clearly see his confusion as he tried to join what are the two very different natures of me, one being a dedicated horticulturalist, and the other being the writer I had become. In his mind it was clear that these two very different personalities did not entirely gel, but as I explained, if you look at the world there are so many questions and contradictions, it surprise me more people do not see them and ask questions of them. I am not sure he was convinced, but the fact is, that if you look hard and deeply at most things, I am sure you will find a thread on which you can weave a tale.

Look at History? Let’s be honest here, the one thing we know is fact about our history books is that history is always written by the victor. The guys that lose do not get too much of a say in what goes down in our history books, I look to my own life for the best examples. Simply looking at what was taught in school during the 1970’s and what has emerged today shows me that a great deal of what I was taught is falsehoods and lies. The victor chooses what will be written, and to a certain degree hides what they would prefer kept in the dark. Not sure you agree, well let’s look at say Native American history, or even the slave trade, both have now been proven to contain many false hoods to hide certain acts of evil, and comparing what we know today with what I was taught in school forty years ago, the facts are now very different indeed. Creative license was most certainly a contributing factor to our so called books of historical facts, and I think in a way it is a flaw in mankind to try and present them in a better light than maybe they deserve.

Look at the battle of Hastings? We all know the story of the glorious victory of William the Conqueror and how he faked a retreat to lure Harold off his hill, and then turned on him and his mighty warriors beat down the Saxons to victory and the crown of England, we have the Bayeux Tapestry to prove it was all true.

Ok well firstly it was made at the court of William (The Victor) so I have some doubt as to how exact it is. Secondly what it fails to show is the fact that Harold had spent most of the weeks prior in the north beating back the Vikings, whom he routed from Britain and pushed back into the sea. Harold then got word of William, and made a hasty long journey back towards the south in order to meet him in battle. The day of the battle, Harold’s men were tired from an exhausting march south, and had Harold chosen to wait and rest his men before taking on William, history could have told an entirely different story. These kinds of missing facts and contradictions within history are gold to a writer, they create loop holes in which we can slip in and spin a creative yarn.

Another of my personal favourite topics is archaeology. I know right, people always look at me and have that, “he is well beyond reality look.” OK I get that, but do some research and you find all sorts of wonderful tools to fuel a writer’s imagination. I grew up being taught Stonehenge was approximately four thousand years before Christ in age. Today it is now being touted that it could well be dated as being somewhere around fifteen thousand years BC; I mean how delightfully thrilling is that? We just took a giant step backwards in time of 11 thousand years, which can only mean that we have been around far longer than first thought and we have been building stuff long before it was believed we could, Yay the pre-iron age men.

Speaking of the Iron Age, just when exactly was that? If your search engines are right, and they say they are, the Iron Age has been dated to somewhere around 1200 to 600 BC, in the UK it is closer to the 600 BC as it took many years for the techniques to travel to this land. Hmm ponderous this thought, so I ask the question, how come at this moment in our time are the very same people who dated this age, finding Celtic metal and gold artefacts that date back to around 3000 BC in the UK? Another thing that always confused me at me school was, how come Rome was this glorious city made of marble with amazing buildings, and yet the history books tell us when the Romans arrive here (Britain) we were all in mud huts and unable to create anything? Rome grew to its glorious heights, as the history books prove, because they paid the Celts to guard the northern boarders of Italy, which basically places Celts on their door step for a very long time before Rome grew to power, are you seriously telling me all they learned was how to make wine and fight, I think not? You see what I mean, loop holes everywhere, and for me as a writer, the real world is providing me with some fantastic information to exploit.

As a writer I see my job as the creator of a vehicle that will open up a scenario that will legitimately allow the reader to use their imagination, and be transported into a life that can feel as real as their day to day life. I write thick books that can take anywhere between 4 to 11 days to read depending on the reader. I spend several years working away behind the scenes to create each book, I work every day on some kind of scenario be it research, writing, editing, talking to others, or simply pondering. I look at life and people and what we know, and then I rip it apart and rebuild it in a way that I hope will fascinate and make you think. I lob in real life mixed with fantasy, I take the human and mix it up with faith, magic, and all the other none proven things in this world, and when I work at it for long enough, I create something so extremely different that it actually makes some kind of sense, and hopefully it entertains. It is a wonderful thing to do, and it gives me the greatest of pleasure, and even though I sit here alone with my thoughts and will never meet the people who share my words and my world, simply knowing they have derived some form of pleasure is more than enough to keep me searching for more.

Heirs to the Kingdom is a full and complex tale based on life, and embroidered with many loop holes that I have exploited to create my own tapestry. It does feel very real at times and occasionally a little fantastical, which I adore. I have embedded many little pearls of wisdom, and some philosophy for good measure and given it all a thoroughly good shake up to mix it well. I hope it is indeed something that will delight anyone who reads it, it has certainly been a truly wonderful thing to create. I do get asked a great deal why I gave up working in horticulture after 35 years, and the simple truth is, my mind wandered elsewhere and it gave me a huge amount of joy.

And that folks, Is why I chose to become a full time writer.