Hopefully, I will finish my latest novel today. I have written the biography the biography bit to go with RICHARD HEADINGTON PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR.
Not a great fan of The Beatles when I was a kid, I went to an all boys school and it was girls who screamed and tore their hair out – not cool for boys, had a hit with Paperback Writer. I loved that song and set myself the ambition to become a paperback writer. Now, significantly more than half a century later I am a paperback writer. A prolific writer who right now is in month twenty-eight of a three year challenge to become the most prolific writer in the world of Amazon e-books.
Yes, I began writing as a teenager. Submitting a few bits and pieces to the local newspaper these were picked up so I guess you could say I became a published author. But I had dreams way beyond that, I dreamed of fame and fortune and set my eyes on emulating Alistair Maclean, he who wrote The Guns of Navarone, Ice Station Zebra and much more. Thank goodness my teenage scribble within that ambition was never submitted to a publisher and is long since lost. The Obscene Publications Act is still in force is it not !
In 1971 I came to live in the infant new city of Milton Keynes attending teacher training college in Bletchley Park. At that time, pardon the pun, its wartime codebreaking was still an enigma. The activities of Bletchley Park feature in my writing of several occasions including THE DIARY OF BILLY HARDCASTLE, THE MURDER TREE and in non-fiction IN SEARCH OF THE LEONS.
One of the tutors at college was the author Dennis Hamley. In one tutorial he set we students the task of writing a short story to be read to a group of children in school. I wrote MICKEY RIG which Hamley picked out and read to all other students. It was a time of both embarrassment and pride. Hamley sent the story to his publishers but it came back with the note: This is not one for us. It was a short one off story and could not be made into a book. For decades I held the memory of Mickey Rigg but lost the story line and conceded it to history, However, in January 2022 I sat down, recalled the characters and plot rewrote the story with MICKEY RIGG being published by Amazon as an e-book on 30th January 2022.
Teaching in the late 1070’s and early 1980’s I wrote stories which I read to teenagers in my classes. Sending these to publishers gave me enough rejection slips to paper a wall. However, I managed to persuade our local newspaper to pay me to write a weekly feature page. These features were a kaleidoscope through the then adolescent new city of Milton Keynes. The articles were collected together and published as a paperback in 1994 under the title NOT THE CONCRETE COWS. Such is now available on Amazon. In 2020 I wrote a follow up MILTON DREAMS THE CITY THAT NEVER WAS.
Not The Concreate Cows was not actually my first published book. Such was PETER’S MAGIC FOUNTAIN PEN which I wrote for my son’s twelfth birthday. This is also now available on Amazon. At the same time I wrote what I think is one of my best works THE WILD ADVENTURESOF DI CENTRAL EATING. However, I never got my act together and did not submit it to a publisher. It is now available as an e-book on Amazon. I really do` want this to appear in paperback form but it must be illustrated. The works of Roald Dhal would never have achieved what they did without Quentin Blake. Try as I have, I never found someone to illustrate the adventures. My now seven year old granddaughter, Frances, has agreed with me when she is a little bit older she will do the work.
It was in 2016 that I was first accepted by Amazon as an author. What an amazing platform Amazon is and how much it has opened doors to writers like myself. I can not thank this company enough. When RICHARD HEADINGTON PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR is published it will be my one hundred and tenth work on Amazon.
A sad old man who longs to be
a teenager I am but I am also, thanks to The Fab Four, a Paperback Writer.
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