A canny $35 Thrift Store purchase from Housing Works in the East Village. Perfectly suited to fit the only remaining space by the window of my Midtown Apartment looking south over the East River. Ornate wood with curved legs and enough detail to retain an interest but not enough to distract from the task in hand.

Prior to my move to the New York, I grew up in England which, when you consider a career in basketball is more akin to Fishing In Las Vegas, hence the name of my Blog; the Vegas Fisherman. Travelling and living down under showed me that anything is possible which is a good thing, given the things I experienced in the early stages of my Basketball Career and detailed in Semi-Pro-Am.

18 Days before I finished the first draft.
(Not counting GCSE English Lessons with Mr. Andrews at School)

It's something people ask about a whole lot and kindly express a keen interest in when I'm mid story. A piece of Basketball History was made when a Club from the Basketball Backwaters of Britain had the chance to compete at the highest level of European Sport at the turn of the century. Added to those pressures were an unrealistically low budget, the need to compete domestically and survive over eighty games which crammed two seasons of games into one.

The thought had been rumbling around in my head for over ten years now and I needed some space for more important ideas in the minimal capacity that is my brain. Good or Bad, this was an act of necessity to free up my mind to focus on the present and future; Mission Accomplished.

In every way to help someone like me, who takes it into his head to write a book and has a finite time to do it in, even smaller budget and if you can get that low, even less of an idea of the process. Simply, it would not have happened without them.

Apart from finally having ten years of, "One Day I'll Get Round To That Book Thing" finally ticked off the list; the writing came quite easily to me it would seem and once I got into it, 5,000 words or so tumbled out of my head and onto the screen each day. For anyone that hasn't done so yet, if you have the time then it really is a fulfilling thing to spend some time doing.

I guess by default, insofar as I've read every James Bond novel then Ian Fleming should be up there. Other repeat readers are Elmore Leonard's various offerings such as Get Shorty, Rum Punch and Out of Sight. I'll read anything from a bookstore that's priced on or around a dollar that's about Basketball and oddly, more than a few by Terry Pratchett.

I'll be sure to ask the first one when I meet them... I hope they're nice

Now that would be telling... Follow me @GRWilson2020 and you can find out when I do

The person next to me.
Not buying that?

OK. How about...
Life... The Next Big Thing... And The People I Know

I borrowed a decent camera, walked to my Rec Center on 54th Street and headed upstairs to the gym (It's OK, I am a member). Luckily the original building from around the 1920's has a running track that sits above the basketball court which enabled me to place the fifty pound note on the floor, nip upstairs, snap away before it got swept up by the cleaner. Some amateur photo shopping later we have the end product. This wasn't the first idea, but my arty and convoluted idea of shooting the outdoor ball court by the United Nations Building didn't come over in the same International way I wanted, so I settled for the Basketball / Money motif.