Writing a biography seems like a piece of cake, until the attempt is made. Then... Well, where do you start.
I'm not too keen on any novels that begin in childhood. So, let's cut a long and boring factual story, and make it very short.
I was born in Liverpool, England, and spent time in North Wales during the war. It was in North Wales that I qualified for grammar school, that education was continued in Liverpool - with no success whatsoever - and was followed by fifteen years in the British Army. During that time I got married and had three children: two girls and a boy, in that order. After the army - which I left because I was going deaf - the family moved to Australia for five years. I worked in New South Wales as a door-to-door insurance salesman, then in New South Wales and Queensland as a motor mechanic. But, more importantly, in that time my writing began to get published.
At that time I'd been writing for many years, with little success. In Australia, my short stories took off. Some general stories were published in the top glossy magazines for women, short crime stories were published in Adam, a pulp magazine for men.
My wife always told me that everything we do in life comes in useful sooner or later. As far as my writing goes, I'm convinced she's right - and this theory could be useful to many aspiring writers.
When we returned to England, I spent five years working on computers for a major bank, and some nine years designing, casting and painting toy soldiers for collectors around the world. But I continued writing, and - I think it was in 1986 - I moved away from fiction and began writing articles. The success I had in national magazines led to work with two local newspaper groups. I was writing short feature articles for them, as many as ten, 500-word articles a week. I had to be economical with words, and - now it's back to my wife's brilliant theory - I'm sure that economy with words helped me when I began writing short Western novels.
Perhaps it did. One thing I do know is that writing short Western novels helped me when I turned to crime writing. And now it's working the other way: creating complicated plots for crime novels means that my Western novels are becoming more complex - and so far, fingers crossed, that's a good thing.
