writing

My non-fiction book is called “How can We Make This Happen? : Successful Change Through Incentives and Trust” (published Sep 2016) and you can read all about it, and how to buy it, at www.trenchantbooks.com . It is a course textbook for project management modules at the University of Greenwich Business School. In 2020 I edited & converted the autobiography of Hugh Walker MBE into a Kindle book published also by Trenchant Books – in 2024 the sales of this are still trickling through and the tiny proceeds go to a charity.

In Jun 2019 my first fiction appeared; a flash fiction in the anthology called “Story Cities: A City Guide For The Imagination” published by Arachne Press and available at this web shop – follow the #StoryCities story on Twitter. At the launch event in June I was invited to close the show of live readings. It was subsequently called a ‘glorious finale’ on Twitter, which is nice. You can suffer it too by using this YouTube link, or you can listen below to a later audio performance as part of the London Design Festival 2019, which is perhaps more spirited (practised).

Since that brief flash (ha ha) of success, I am now collecting the traditional rejections/silences that are the proving ground of an emerging artist.

In 2020 I did have a number of flash fictions published online at adhocfiction.com and a short story published in an eBook anthology by happylondonpress.com

In 2021 I have started taking online drama and playwriting courses run by People’s Company who are part of The Theatre Royal, Plymouth, and by Down Stage Write who cover Devon and Cornwall. I really enjoy writing dialogue so who knows … perhaps the play’s the thing. Not entirely abandoning the fiction, though, I’m also doing some workshops run by LiteratureWorks who are based in Exeter; this being early 2021 all courses are online, of course. A joyful outcome from one course is that a small contribution from me is included in Quay Voices #1, an anthology from Quay Words published 30 July 21.

In 2023 I had four flash fiction stories selected for the innovative Plymouth Vending Machine project supported by Literature Works and Down Stage Write.

In 2024 I am trying to write a memoir, roughly covering the first 40 years of my life. It is principally for my daughters, who one day may be curious. My own father died suddenly at 67, and there is so much that I did not ask him.