WELCOME TO MY WORLD

Glad you could drop in, please visit my various pages and let me know what you think also if you would be so kind please – join my mailing list – and I will let you know when I have a new sleep disturbing book for you to read.

Firstly, most people are interested to learn what prompts a writer to start writing especially as in my case at such a late time in my life.

Having spent most of my career in the Travel Industry, starting right back in the late fifties I would say I have seen a lot of the world and a lot of the people in it, at least many times more than most for which I hope you find my writing has at least the touch of experience amongst other things.

After a few years working in my hometown I moved from the North of England to London where I became joint managing director of the Tour Giant, Thomson Holidays then at its very beginning so it came as no surprise when many years later I received an invite from Testimony Films to appear in a Documentary about the early history of the inclusive travel industry they were planning to shoot.

The program, entitled, ‘Sun, Sex, and Sangria,’ actually went out at peak time on ITV in January of 2001 and attracted an audience in excess of 5 million viewers. Resulting in many extensive interviews at the time.

The producer of the program suggested that I set down my experiences in book form, and from that my book of the Package Tour Industry was completed in the summer of 2002.

Keeping the balance between observation of the sublime and often ridiculous as well as sadly tragic was no easy task combined with serious health issues although to be honest writing a book can take you mind of almost anything.

After that, I was recuperating and found myself with little or nothing to do. So I began recalling my own childhood and the hardships my sister and I, as children, had to endure from a bullying father and an indifferent mother.

After a lot of thought the idea that some of my life story and experience might have the makings of a further book – albeit, a fictional one came into my head . I then went on to consider what might possibly have happened with my life had I not been the resilient survivor I proved to be. And thus was born, ‘Leave a Light on for Jesus’, an expression my mother used to use when I was a child; she was always afraid that if Jesus came for me in the night, he might not find me in the dark!, I feel it is a hard story dealing with many issues that relate directly to many peoples lives in present day Britain especially those who have had dealings with the Catholic Church of which I can never be called a Fan.

I have been asked a number of times just how much of the book is based upon fact and how much is fiction; I have also been asked if I found the experience cathartic. Suffice it to say that the initial background of the story, based in Blackpool, where I was born, is largely true, including the violent abuse of our father and the physical punishment meted out by the Christian Brothers at the Roman Catholic College. Where it begins to stray into the realms of fiction is the point where my fictional sister was ‘beaten to death’ by our father. Of course this did not happen, although I have to admit that my older sister, Pat, did endure a great deal of suffering at our father’s hands and she did die at a relatively young age, and were I asked who was to blame for this I know where most of the responsibility lies.

However, writing ‘Leave a Light on for Jesus’ was not in any way cathartic. For me it is a story that needs to be told as an exposé of the abuse that was quite common amongst my generation, and which largely went unpunished. It was quite usual in those days, where we to turn up at school sporting black eyes and serious bruising, to be told, ‘you probably deserved it.’ It certainly is not intended as a story for the fainthearted but rather an indictment of the belief in those times of institutions like family, school, and even church, that they had an inherent right to brutalise children in their care with absolute impunity.

Moving away from the autobiographical I have written Nemesis, this is a journey into the darkest side of the human soul and deed, where all hope is lost and only the brave should fear to tread. Matter of fact, brutal and shocking the book is part of a series of novels I have started which I am sure will appeal to those who like their shocks both extended and with a very strong voltage.

Yours truly,

Welcome to My World