About

I am a writer.

After thirty-five years in the ship-owning industry – working in Liverpool, in Singapore and Edinburgh – and writing millions of words in minutes and reports, I have redirected my energies.

I studied Creative Writing at Middlesex University in 2002.  I write short stories, novels, plays and film scripts.

 My fable – The Battle of Slotterham Hall, AD 1929 – is published on Amazon as an e-book.

The Pheasants resolve to confront the Shoot.

 

  My first novel – Requiem for Private Hughes – was published on Amazon in September 2015, as an ebook and paperback.

Requiem for Private Hughes was shortlisted in the inaugural Hall & Woodhouse Dorchester Literary Festival Writing Competition in 2018.

The ambitions of Somerset art student Archie Middlebrook are shattered during his Army national service in a terrorist ambush in The Malayan Emergency. Geraint Hughes, is killed. Four decades pass before Archie comes to terms with the trauma of his youth to celebrate the life of his friend and fellow national serviceman with a London exhibition of paintings.

My short stories – Let It Be Anthea and Henry’s Hen Night – won The Yeovil Short Story Prize in 2013 and 2015, and my filmscript – Sandscape Artist won the 2014/15 Somerset Film Scriptwriting Competition.

“PEBBLES”, my collection of short stories, was launched at the Yeovil Literary Festival in October 2016.

The second edition of PEBBLES has been published as both an ebook and paperback in November 2020.  Chip Tolson has been reading selected stories from Pebbles on the Exeter Authors Association weekly Coffee Time Story Sessions over Facebook Live during November and December 2020.

Pebbles lie on the shore in their billions waiting to be found. Sometimes one or two are picked up, maybe even kept and taken home to be looked at from time to time; more often after a cursory glance, they are cast out to sea, perhaps bouncing and making a splash before they disappear. In the hope that some of the stories in this collection, some short, some longer, will be noticed they lie waiting on the pages.

My second novel – Birchland Hall – was published on Amazon in September 2017, as an ebook and paperback.

In 1995, two cousins, strangers since an unfriendly childhood, inherit a rundown Victorian Mansion in Dewsfield, West Yorkshire, built by their great-great grandfather in the 1860s. They face an unsought responsibility to bring life back to Birchland Hall. Over months the cousins’ lives entangle searching for family connection.

“SANDSCAPE”,  An artist, sitting on a beach, is painting a picture. He is interupted by a young man, a soldier AWOL from his regiment, who questions why the artist has painted trees growing on the beach. The artist’s initial hostility at the interruption to his day fades as he and the young man learn about each other.

The film is directed and produced by Somerset Film who are based at The Engine Room in Bridgwater.  SANDSCAPE, is available on YouTube.