Like many other writers, I write because I feel compelled to write. I’m one person in a larger herd of word nerds. I write to make sense of the world. To try to find, and write, the right words for the right moment. I can trace back my first attempt at fiction writing to something I wrote when I was about 9. It was an epic science fiction story about an alien who landed in the back garden of a young girl called Clare Anderson and it was up to her, and her parents, to help get the titular Poor Little Alien back to their spaceship and then home. (OK, it was the late 1980’s and E.T. had probably been a heavy influence.)

Over thirty years later I’m still making stuff up. Had a couple of rejections for work recently so I’m trying to lick my wounds and carry on. I’m also finishing off my PhD corrections (that includes critical and imaginative writing). It is the biggest piece of work I’ve done since my MA poetry portfolio between 2013/2014.
I’m still learning, and practising — if not making perfect — will make my writing better.

I have ideas for other pieces and, when my brain is less full, I’ll work on them. Until then, I have a load of other people’s novels, poetry, and short stories that have been piling up over the last four years and I can’t wait to go through them.

I hope that over the next forty years I’ll carry on being a writer (and still feel all right about determining myself as such) and bookworm.