A writer? Not me. That was then. I left school at 16 with a handful of grade C GCSEs and no real interest in writing. Fast forward to 2013, and everything changed. A diagnosis of General Anxiety Disorder and Depression forced me to rethink my life. During recovery, I earned a Level 7 Diploma and later a Master’s degree in Business Administration . But it was writing that enriched my life.
It began with football blogs. I wrote for a couple of US websites, and a few of us launched a sports blog. Then, in 2017, I took a leap and started my first novel. That story – Guy Lewis, 51 Degrees North – sparked something deeper. I found myself drawn to the past, to wartime courage and Cold War shadows.
Today, I write fiction under the Northbeam banner. There’s Steel and Silence, following SOE operative Alan Dawber in WWII. And Sector Nine, set in Cold War Berlin, led by intelligence officer Kit Holden, tough, stylish, and utterly fearless. She also has a thing for boots. Not what you might be thinking.
They say have no regrets. The anxieties associated with hiting publish have subsided, but I do think that I should have started writing a lot sooner.
It’s lunchtime in my day job, and as I watch the world go by, I am sat here with conviction that writing has become more than a passion. It’s a way of making sense of the world, and creating new ones altogether.
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