Where did you grow up, and how did this influence your writing?
I grew up in England about thirty miles from London. My town, Hemel Hempstead was a new town, That is it was a small old town from the time of Henry VIII that was suddenly inundated by tens of thousands of Londoners who had been displaced by the Second World War. It had no influence on my writing except that I received a good education and shone at English.
When did you first start writing?
Fifteen years ago. I had run a training center for school leavers who were out of the mainstream either because of their personal circumstances or because they could not manage ordinary school and needed special needs training. They called them the mad, bad and sad. Our job was to get them into the real world of work by finding employment they could manage and enjoy. I saw a lot of bad things during the seven years I did this work and when I left I had the urge to write some of it down in a form that showed exactly how it was for these trainees. Then I just caught the writing bug.
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