About Me

  I was born - one of six siblings – some years after the end of the second World War. My parents were an unlikely pairing. My father, commonly termed as fallen gentry, and my mother, who travelled with her fairground cousins prior to the war, met and married within months of meeting. Mum’s inability to settle involved many moves across the country. (Later I realised that the eight members of my family had all been born in different places.) I think this feeling of always being - however lightly it sits – an outsider made me an observer of people and situations. 

I learned to read very early in life, coached along by my eldest sister. We used to memorise poems, passages from books, corn-flake packets. Anything. We discovered words to articulate our feeling, spelled out the rhythm of sentences, looked for meanings in poetry It’s easy to look back and recognise this now but at the time I think it was instinctive to our curiosity. Unknowingly then, but knowingly now, this was the beginning of me as a writer. 

I would scribble notes, ideas, short stories, thinking that one day I would sit down and – although it was a long time coming – eventually that’s what I did. But also linked to this is the childhood times of sitting around the fire with Mum. In the flickering light we’d make up tales, follow a thread that maybe she’d started and we added to. 

My working life as a builder continued the trend of itinerancy – different jobs, different places. Even a spell in Europe. And today I can add in living and travelling in a motorhome, finding time to write in the quiet of the countryside. 

We are Kit and Kitty. We started our adventures in our Motor Home in September 2018. Kit had a hip replacement and we lost a couple of dear friends and realised life is too short and you have to grab it while you can. We grabbed it with both hands and our adventures started.
We sold our plot of land, static caravan and all our possessions, except photos and memorabilia (which is in storage).
 

Life started in our Motorhome- luckily we get on well and we were excited to start exploring.
We began our adventures in Devon and regularly return there as most of our children and grandchildren live in the county. 

Initially it was a bit daunting and I ( Kitty) thought we would probably last a year but 5 years later we are still on the road. We are  living the dream and travelling keeps us young.

 Mostly it is amazing we are able to experience and explore lots of remote beautiful locations. 

Odd times when it has rained non stop for hours it becomes a bit frustrating but the sun comes out and it is soon forgotten. 

Every place is different, and we never know what we are going to see and who we are going to meet or what the weather is going to be like. 

It’s excellent for Kit as he observes people, situations and soaks it all up like a sponge, feeding his creativity 

 My wife has always been a keen dart’s player and watching her team play in the Ladies league was when the novel began to form. I imagined six women meeting up, stepping out of their everyday existence for a few hours every week. They – The Bluebell girls - like to win, and the enjoyment of a few drinks, the female camaraderie, the sharing of a common aim, meld them together. But outside of this they all have lives lived and lives to be continued. I placed the characters at different stages in this process and brought their back stories up to date, weaving them into the twice weekly gathering at the Bluebell Inn. Their disclosures – revealments actually – needed to be arresting, open to empathy and sympathy, and totally believable to the reader. I also wanted to capture the humour – sometimes black – of how situations are relived in the darkest of times. I also wanted to show positivity, of how someone can rise above circumstance, and walk in the sunshine. I would have liked all of my girls to have had a perfect resolution but unfortunately life isn’t like that. The scope of this novel covers death, romance, murder, the development of an illicit affair, and an insight into characters who haven’t been dealt the best of hands and may stand on the peripheral of society . (At least that what I’ve tried to show but you the reader must be the judge of that.)

Following on from people on the peripheral of society, I placed this book squarely within the contexts of the travelling folk. This novel follows - mainly and amongst others – the fortunes and misfortunes of a Traveller out of his depth in the crime world. Ready cash is on offer and is needed to fuel dreams of an easier life but self-inflected risk pulls him and his family into danger. This novel tracks him from tragedy to his acceptance - and addressment - of his situation. This story includes – not separately but a part of the main - other stories that touch on the mysterious and the unexplained. The blurb on the back cover of this book gives a flavour of its content.  

Now if you were a poor Gypsy mush, who 'd had a run of bad luck and whose ever[1]loving was done with managing on thin air, and someone was to offer you a lucrative run of work, what would you do? Okay, so it' s not legit, but sometimes it' s got to be worth the risk. You could buy your lovely Zilla all that her heart desires, you could stand your rounds at the kitchema without counting the money in your pocket, update your van, put a deposit on a bit of ground to call your own. So you do it, you take the work and you take the risk, but then it all blows up in your face and you ' ve pulled your loved ones into danger. Well worse than danger. And now you ' re going to have to take yourself away, disappear from sight. Be the undead playing at being dead.