About Me

I write. I language. I word. I book.

I wrote a book in 1972 called “Fiys are food for anmls“. I was 4 and obsessed with Little Golden books. I couldn’t differentiate between “L” and “I”, vowels were clearly optional and I hadn’t quite worked out how to form the plural of words ending in “Y”. I still have that book.

I received my first rejection letter from Penguin Books in 1976 at the age of 8. Penguin advised that whilst they were very impressed with the hand sewn book binding job I had performed on the manuscript, my revamping of Roger Hargreaves Mr Men series had some copyright issues and thus they had no choice but to reject my submission. I was so shattered I never submitted anything again. Except, of course, those angry letters to the editor signed off by “Outraged in Edithvale”.