I kicked off in Sheffield, England, but the tide pulled me to Sydney when I was seven. I did my time at Sydney High and UNSW, but the real education didn’t start until I hit London.
The Winter of Discontent was howling through the streets, and I was looking for a way to stay upright. I saw a busker at London Bridge Underground and figured I had nothing to lose but my pride. I jumped the barrier, dropped my guitar case on the ground. I put in a fifty pence piece as a hint, and started picking strings. When the first coin hit, I knew I’d found a loophole in the system. That life of excess and hat-passing became Half Alive – a manual for buskers in the London Underground – how not to!
After that, things got strange. I wrote about a non-corporeal entity hitching a ride in the back of human consciousness, fuelled by psychic energy and running from the shadow of Dr Anton Mesmer. Then came a darker turn: a story of a woman behind bars, finding her only exit through an imaginary angel friend named Merciful Oblivion.
I’ve put about four million words onto paper since then. I’ve lived a dozen lives in the process – I’ve been the busker and the real estate mogul (ha-ha), the stoned hippie and the professional credit provider. I’ve played the star pupil and the crashed-out repeater, drifting between glorious sainthood (?!) and the life of a debauched wretch.
Variety hasn’t just been the spice of my life; it’s been the whole meal.
My latest, Shadows Beneath the Surface, took eight years to crawl out of the inkwell. It’s a thriller that doesn’t pull its punches. I think you’ll find it’s worth the admission price.
