Writing fiction has been of interest to me for as long as I can remember. One of my favourite things in school was when the teacher gave us free rein to write a fiction story of our choice, I actually found one of these that I'd received an A* for in my old student record of achievement file. It was strange reading it back, ten pages of A4 painfully scripted by hand in fountain pen. I am only thirty four years of age and ball point had obviously been invented, so god knows why I slogged it out in fountain pen, but I did. After school my writing literally stopped, I got caught up with other things that people in their late teens enjoy, mainly partying and getting drunk if I remember correctly, and working to pay for the aforementioned activities. Even in the sixteen years' gap between that last hand scribed story I found and the publishing of Watchers, I tried many times to start a book. Sadly any project I tried never got past the first three chapters. I even started writing Watchers in 2004, shortly after meeting my long term partner and now fiancée, Laura. The start was a little different but the character names and general plot were the same, and that's how it began. Although at that point I did not get past chapter two. Whilst I'd often think up cool or quirky ideas for stories I'd never get round to writing, Watchers would not go away. For near on ten years it remained where I thought it always would, in my head. Then as the indie book began to take hold I saw my chance to get this story out there, now all I had to do was actually write the thing. I penned the first two chapters and let a friend read them, asking for an honest review, when she literally demanded I carry on writing it so she could see the story unfold I knew it was now or never, and after nearly a year's research and writing I finally finished the book, even leaving it open enough for a follow up novel if the story obtained some good reviews, which it did. So, being a glutton for punishment and still not quite able to believe that I'd written a novel length story, I started book two. My plans were to have it written and published by now, but we had a pretty shitty 2013 with a number of close family deaths, this saw the writing of book two well and truly put on hold. Thankfully, we did have one ray of light in that dark year: my son Finley was born in January. Whilst being great fun and now a year old, he certainly does not give me much time to put finger to keyboard. SB

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