How I came into writing

When I was twelve, I wrote a story about some scientists who discovered giant flies in an active volcano. I think it was a concoction of ideas I had seen in various films, but it gave me the first inkling that stories could take me somewhere I couldn’t see but only could imagine. I didn’t really come to reading novels until I was fourteen when we were given a list of thirty novels to choose from for our examinations. I read every one of them; the scope was wonderfully diverse and included the likes of Animal Farm, Hiroshima, Of Mice and Men, The Mayor of Casterbridge and The Bridge of San Luis Rey.

The energy these stories provided pushed me into exploring poetry and short stories. Much of these were pastiches of what I had read but that didn’t matter: I was experimenting. Of course, life started: I married, travelled, had my boys; became a social worker. I managed to write a novel in my late twenties and ‘almost’ got published but I was going elsewhere by then and allowed it all to slip.

I always knew I would write a story about Portland. Although my grandfather was a Portlander, I was brought up in Weymouth, but the great bulk of Portland was always there like a mysterious dark companion. I took my time getting there though; it was until my fifties, that I began scribbling notes. After all that, it didn’t take long before it held me in its grip. Every morning before work, I set the alarm 45 minutes earlier than usual and arrived at my desk with the questions: Which character am I working on today and what could happen to them that would be interesting enough to keep me involved. It sounds glib and trite but the novel wrote itself. I hardly knew what was going to happen until it happened.

Truth be told, I hadn’t expected or actually wanted to write a psychological thriller. I was thinking of something heavier, more literary. Foolish thinking! The writer is a facilitator of sorts who allows their writing a healthy amount of autonomy. I was surprised to write The Eye of a Little God; the story of six ordinary characters over six extraordinary years, from Brexit to Covid. And I certainly didn’t expect The Hole at the Centre of the Universe - Conversations between the Living and the Dead: An Italian Odyssey. Who knows, one day I may return to those giant flies in that volcano, unless, of course, they have escaped into someone else’s story.