Maybe it's just me, but I find more of interest in worthy and heroic failures than in triumphant successes. Or maybe it's just because I'm a Scotsman. I cannot speculate. I leave speculation to those as gets paid for it. All I know is that what drives me to read and to write are tales of those who didn't quite make it, narrations of the sorry left-overs of history.
I am a native of Edinburgh, douce capital of North Britain, and a place entirely without trams: that I am Edinbourgeois says much, but not everything. I studied Modern Languages at Aberdeen University and at the University of London wrote a post-graduate thesis on the German Radical Reformation. Having returned from exile in London many years ago, I now live in Edinburgh and work in local government.
Throughout the long days of my working-life, I am a software engineer and database designer by trade, and have been so for thirty-five years. Ah, but by night, by night ... I am a barely tolerated writer of slightly dodgy fiction, and will talk about my writing to anyone who makes the mistake of sounding politely interested.
I write because I can very rarely find a good book to read; between times, I worry about the state of humanity, and wish my writing could change the world. It won't, I know. Something else will, and we don't know what. But why worry? Let us read instead of abandoned railway-schemes, of ill-advised international languages, elephants thousands of miles from home, and knee-preservers. And suchlike things.
