This page tells a little of my writing, gives some advice, a short  story and my published work.

Until a few years ago, my writing was steady and smouldering, but for my own pleasure. Then, I started studying creative writing at local college; it turned the smouldering into an unquenched blaze.

Daydreaming Writer.
For me, the act of dreaming is taking an idea that inspires, sinking into it and allowing imagination to become all. Some people can dream on the move, spontaneously extending an idea as it occurs, fashioning it into a story. Others, like me, need to carry an idea around, nurturing it over time and letting it evolve through different stages until it reaches maturity. Only then, do I sit down to write allowing the story to form around me, becoming an extra on a film set watching the scenery go up, the characters growing and the story flowing before me. So what is this dreaming that we writers do? I think it is simply entering the world of our imagination, where reality ebbs and our creativity flows, spilling out over our pages, giving fruition to our dreams. 


• The Room - A short Story
  Anger had taken over as I pulled off the road into the lay-by. Before the gravel settled, I thumped my fist onto the steering wheel knowing I had become a danger on the road, my judgment obscured by an emotional mist of sadness, guilt, fear, and anger.
  .........Earlier I had sat in Auntie's drawing room, looking around as she shuffled off to make tea; my offer of help declined. Years ago the room had been welcoming and open, the decoration and furnishings impeccable, chosen by an eye for fashion and infused with her warmth and charm. The memory brought a brief flash of freshness to my mind that lifted me. But, it was only a flash. It soon dissolved, replaced a bland mustiness, not as stark as forest dankness but still all pervading. Atrophy had set in with a vengeance. The ceiling, once a glowing sky, had become grey rain-clouds and, as if those clouds had shed rain onto the walls, the pastel colours of the wallpaper were leached of pigment and stained with time. Her favourite chair sat at a tilt, a castor missing. Thrown across its back, as matted as a gutter cur, was the fir coat Uncle Jim had given her for their golden wedding anniversary.
  ........Getting up I stood by the fireplace looking up at Granddad immortalised in oils, each raised brushstroke now home to a fibrous mot of dust. Like an urchin’s mother, I wet my handkerchief with saliva and gently wiped his face. My eyes dropped to the mantle its content only ever altered by addition. Her life encapsulated on six-foot of horizontal, dark oak. Fading pictures in tarnished silver frames. I studied them one by one from left to right. The drainpipe girl all curls and freckles. Svelte debutante. Proud with cap and gown. Glowing at her wedding. The children. Then the grandchildren. On the extreme right stood the bronze urn with Uncle Jim’s ashes. After the funeral I had suggested she scatter them in his beloved Dee, at that favourite fishing place, but she could not bear to be separated from him. 
  .........Aunty shambled in with the tea tray balanced on knotted, arthritic hands. Taking it from her, I placed it on the little bow legged table that’s veneer had been warped by something hot. I poured the tea and, for a while, we sat and chatted. I looked at her crumpled face, but I heard the voice of a girl as she regaled me with her stories. She spoke lovingly about the Chinese rug that she had found in the little market in Peking and how poor Jim had, under protest, trussed it in string, making a shoulder sling, and carried it on the journey home. She had continued with her stories about the jade Buddha from the floating shop and the crystal goblets they had seen cut in Briarly Hill. As she talked her feeble eyes reached out, around the room, to pick out the dusty object of each story.
  .........At last I decided I must ask the question that was the main purpose of my visit.
  .........‘Aunty, please come home with me. You know we want you to and the children would love it. Move in with us!’
  .........She reached over and took my hand in finger ends, leaning to look into my face.
  .........‘No dear! Thank you, but you can manage without me! I need to stay here.’
  .........So few words, but those dull eyes had locked on mine, and the tone in which delivered conveyed a determination and finality that I knew would not be shaken. Having calmed myself, and realizing that my anger was frustration based, my eyes focused somewhere between the windscreen and infinity and I knew she would soon die in that room. I should have argued, been firm and pointed out the advantages. But, I just knew there was no point. Or was I weak? It was that bloody room! She was still my Aunt! She was still Aunt Mary! Yes, she was a crippled caricature of my memories but her mind was still alive; no dementia there.
  .........She was going down, locked together with that room, like a captain and his sinking ship, clinging on to pride and the last remnants of life’s flotsam. It’s how she wanted it to end, yet that did not diminish my guilt or fear for her. Was I selfish? I don’t know. I do know that she would have been less of a burden on my soul had she gone home with me.

• Published work
  The Divide published by Poetry Now, in The Inner Voice anthology (ISBN 1846-020018).
  Spring published by Poetry Now in As Seasons Change anthology (ISBN 0-7543-0834-0 2000).
  Dreams of Ice published by Anchor Press in Inspiration from Wales anthology ISBN 1-85930-313-7