Influences

It turns out that I do indeed have influences in my writing. Listed below are authors who have influnced me. I'm working on a series of blog posts about each author, and in what way they have had an impact on my style. Click on an author to go to the relevant post. If I haven't written about them yet, then the link will take you through to the Wikipedia entry for each author.

 

Reading list

One thing I am very bad about is keeping up with my own pleasure reading. Here's what I'm currently reading - if you see something on the list for too long, give me a nudge, so I remember to finish reading it!

Frequently Asked Questions

What is this site about?

It is a journey. It is a dream. It is a pretentious attempt to sound deep and poetic...

In all seriousness though, it is simply my attempt to become a published author. Since my mid-teens I have wanted to be a writer, in fact from the age of 16 I have written, and then deleted, binned, forgotten or abandoned a wide variety of stories, novels, scripts etc. Back when I thought I was going to be a lawyer, the idea of also being a writer always held appeal, but as a sideline project that I could do under a pseudonym so that it didn't interfere with my "real" job. Now that I want this to be my real job, there's no need for the pseudonym. It is nothing more, and nothing less, than an attempt to succeed as an author.

Didn't it used to be called Project Ex-Lex?

Yes it did, but not any more.  

I needed a name for the site, and I couldn't think of one.  So I used a spur of the moment, not intended seriously, throwaway comment, safe in the knowledge that I could change it to something better at a later date.  Which I have decided to do now.

Who are you?

I was born in 1979 in Paisley, a large industrial town in the West of Scotland. I attended the University of Glasgow where I graduated with an LL.B. (Hons) in Scottish Law, and absolutely zero desire to become a lawyer. I continued my legal education at the Universtiy of Cambridge, reading for an LL.M. in International Law. I then spent two years out of academia trying to secure funding for a PhD (first at Cambridge, then at Glasgow, then the London School of Economics), eventually starting as a self-funded student at the London School of Economics under the supervision of Dr Gerry Simpson.

Towards the end of a troubled first year at LSE I became ill, then depressed, and eventually took a one year interruption of studies that stretched to two years whilst I got my head around what I really wanted in life. In early 2007 I realised what I wanted wasn't law. What I wanted to do was write. I officially withdrew from my doctoral studies at LSE in June 2007, and have been working on writing ever since, with some moderate success.

I have been a somewhat regular contributor to the Creative Writing section on Gumtree, as well as Fiction Friday over at Write Stuff, which has helped to raise my profile, and my confidence.

In June I entered a screenwriting contest to work with Podcast author Scott Sigler, and was one of the four winners.

I write a weekly column on the Write Stuff website. Check me out every Sunday.

In November 2007 I took part in, and completed, NaNoWriMo, working on the "decade in the making" first draft of The Long Watch. The first draft will be completed in spring 2008, and I hope to send it to publishers in the autumn.