John

I was born and first brought up a country boy in Rutland, the smallest (it’s tiny) county of England. In later childhood my family moved to the nearby elegant Georgian town of Stamford. The seed was sowed of a lifelong love of things old, especially buildings, and things rural. I should have become an architect really, of the conservationist variety. But instead I was apprenticed into printing and learned the joy of words, both physically in assembling now-archaic moveable type and, as I became an avid reader, words sounding in the mind. Today my favourite reading is issues-based and about the human condition. I try to write to concerns of that sort too.

The early years as a compositor lead, rather naturally, to graphic design. That occupied the first half of my working life. But I began to realise that it wasn’t really my thing. Gradually the interest in old houses and the doing-up of them evolved, part-time to begin with, until eventually I escaped design to convert passionately enthusiastic hobby into momey-earning work. I spent twenty happy years doing that: renovating old town houses, cottages and, once, doing a barn conversion, loving (pretty well) every minute of it. But it proved unsustainable from a financial point of view and for the final four years of working life I found another sort of creative employment: landscape gardening.

On retiring from that, and because the graphic design phase of my life had involved some copywriting, I returned to my first love: the printed word. But now it could the writing of that which I felt inspired to set down, as opposed to being paid to do; being mercenary. Now I don’t need to be conventionally successful and so I can please myself. I’d rather write passionately on subjects I care about than be successfully bored.

I hope that what I’m finally getting around to say in words, some of it a distillation of experience, good and sometimes not-so-good, from the variegated tapestry of my life sometimes resonates; touches you a little, or perhaps stirs a memory, or occasionally makes you smile. At any rate, I hope you enjoy reading my work. If you do, I’ll have succeeded, in some modest way.

At the moment I have two published novels: Convergence, self-published on Amazon Kindle, and Forebears, published by Autharium. A third is on the way. An autobiography, Wishing for the Better, is being made progressively available free-to-read on my website.