I always enjoyed writing. But I first committed myself to writing stories as such - other than a few minor works done as school assignments that is - around the age of eighteen. That year, while attending tertiary college, I set myself the task of writing a novel.

As a writer, I am principally a novelist. However, my latest book - two books in fact - is what I would call a travel memoir and deals with my life both before and after I became a world traveller. I just thought that now would be a good time to pen such a work.

I probably would have become an indie author well before I actually made the decision to self-publish a trilogy of novels (some years ago) but for the fact that such a move was cost prohibitive. The advent of digital technology, however, changed the situation. Over a period of decades I have tried traditional publishing outlets time after time and though by now I have had some success in marketing my work accordingly it has been limited. In any event I think being an independent artist is better in many, many ways and indeed preferable for a certain kind of individual / artist.

We will have to see about that! But I look forward to partnering with smashwords and seeing where the journey leads.

While writing my first novel, in particular, I caught a glimpse of the pleasure to be had from setting down a sentence, combining several to form a paragraph and shaping a number of paragraphs into the novelist’s pride and joy, none other than a chapter! That, for me, was the greatest joy of the process. Today, the simple act of writing continues to please me just as much. What satisfaction can be gained from re-reading something that has been worked on unstintingly in the past! How thrilling to marvel at the rhythm or the fact that one has said exactly what one aspired to say with the means at hand!

Very much - those that I have! Writing, for me, has always been an attempt to communicate with others and get a dialogue going. If something that I write leads a person to think and feel then I have 'succeeded', as far as I am concerned, and might rightly regard that person as a 'fan'. This conception is a little different to how a writer of say genre fiction might consider his / her fans.

I am about to commence work on another trilogy of novels. My first trilogy - and they were all self-contained novels - dealt principally with the themes of healing and reconciliation. The linking theme this time will be new life.

Hermann Hesse. Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Franz Kafka. Albert Camus. Alejo Carpentier. Henry James. Ray Bradbury. Kazuo Ishiguro. Mario Vargas Llosa. Marilynne Robinson. Ian McEwan. Alice Munro. Jhumpa Lahiri.

The potential for discoveries and growth, in short. A new day is like a new life or a completely new chance. Who would want to pass up such an opportunity?

I do a lot of mediation. I have meditated twice a day every day for more than twenty years. I love to read and try to keep as fit as possible - mostly through running and swimming and cycling. I do not have a television so I hardly ever watch that. But I enjoy looking at films from time to time, especially the work of less commercial or mainstream directors. I am also an avid lover of music of many different kinds.

Sometimes simply through chancing on the blurbs that a distributor like smashwords might have online. If something tweaks my interest I might give it a try. But I have also chased down the work of favourite authors, or books that I was especially interested in reading, simply by searching to see if they were available in e-book format.