I've had loads of jobs: electronic engineer, barman, door-to-door salesman, graphic designer, games designer and artist. I currently work as a teaching assistant in a primary school, which is loads of fun, but throughout everything, there has always been writing.
As a kid I wrote fantasy stories. As a teenager, I moved onto horror, then crime. It wasn't until my thirties that I discovered Young Adult fiction - totally by chance. I liked it enough to give it a go, and whaddya know? People think I'm pretty good at it.
I like the darker side of fiction. So whether I'm reading sci-fi, horror or general fiction, it's the nastier, grimier things that pull me in, and that's the sort of thiings I turn out when I'm writing - sometimes with an undercurrent of black humour. So if you're after a teen story of kids going off on an adventure, you're probably in the wrong place...
...unless those kids are from the rougher part of the town, walking into the woods with a baseball bat, a length of rope and murder in their eyes. In that case, stick around.
CM
