Because someone said I should

It's what you do, someone told me. In today's world. Don't get left behind, they said. Just do it. You'll see. It's easy. So here I am and not really sure of what I am doing. Doing it because someone said I should. I write, you see. Fiction mostly. And want to be read. And this is a way to get seen, I am led to believe. So Here I am.

I am a teacher at a high school near Edinburgh in Scotland. I graduated from the University of Aberdeen with honours in English and Philosophy. But it was later, studying Graphics and Ilustration at Edinburgh College of Art, that I discovered I could write. I have been writing ever since.

I began by writing children’s stories and books, have a whole bottom drawer full of yellowing manuscripts. ‘The Chesspiece Magician’ is just one of them, written after a visit to The National Museum of Scotland in 1996 where I saw an exhibition on The Lewis Chessmen and got the idea for the book. I threw it in to The Kelpies Prize 2008 and now find that I am shortlisted, one of three. Will know more on the evening of August 25th when I attend the awards ceremony at the Edinburgh Book Festival.

In recent years I have gained a great deal of recognition with my short story writing. I have been placed in over forty UK based writing competitions over the past two years and have been published in many competition anthologies as well as in The Eildon Tree Literary Magazine. I have also been published by Leaf Books, Cinnamon Press, Fish Publishing and Scottish Borders Council. And, having been highly commended in the recent Cadenza Magazine Story competition, will soon appear in its pages, too.

Oh, and in 2005 I was voted Forth One’s Teacher of The Year – probably because I tell my pupils such great stories.

Watch this space... if for no other reason to see a technophobe fumbling his way through this blogging game.

More will follow.