I’ve been fascinated by the power of stories to move me emotionally since I was a teenager. How does that work? I’ve always wondered. Could I do that? Perhaps not quite the “right” questions for a wanna-be writer to be asking — shouldn’t those questions be a tad nobler? — but that’s how it was with me, anyway.

Since those days, I’ve written for television (cop shows, soaps, Max Gillies) and for the stage myself. I’ve also read a lot more, too. If I had to list ten authors with whom I feel the closest personal affinity, I’d name Laurence Sterne, Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, Anton Chekhov, Joseph Conrad, Evelyn Waugh, Elizabeth Harrower, Thomas Bernhard, Richard Ford and Jen Craig.

After pursuing a mid-life career as a technical writer, I’ve turned in recent years to prose fiction. My debut novel 1961 was published in 2022, and I’ve written a little piece here about some of the factual background behind that novel.

I have read a number of audiobooks for Librivox which you can listen to for free. You can learn more about my Librivox audiobooks here.

An audiobook version of 1961 (read by myself) is now available through Audible and many other outlets too, including libraries. In Australia, and some other countries, you can listen to this audiobook for no charge on Spotify Premium.

I’ve been ‘thinking aloud’ from time to time about my recent reading (ranging from Finnegans Wake to The Rosie Project), and about whatever might be the role of rational thought in novel writing. You can read some of these musings here.

I post frequently on X/Twitter and also on X/Twitter alternative Bluesky. You can read my Bluesky posts here. On Bluesky I have also created the public feeds Auslit, NZlit and ANZlit with a view to gathering in one place posts from people in Australia and New Zealand who write, publish, review or promote literature, or who write about literature in general (although content on some days is just as likely to include cat pix as book talk).