I was born in Gloucester in 1953. I went to a Secondary modern School, leaving at the age of 15 to begin an Engineering Apprenticeship. At 21, I went to work for a Large International Company where I eventually progressed through from a Fitter on maintenance into a managerial role.

After having worked for that company for 31 years, I finished my Engineering / Manufacturing career at the age of 52; it was then that my wife and I moved to Spain to live.

Activities.

I have always been an active sportsperson. I played football in the local Sunday League, then I took up Judo, and gained my Blue belt before giving it up. At 21, I started playing squash and played for many years in the local club ladders and leagues. 1980 I got involved in Scuba Diving and gained my 2nd class certificate and was a branch instructor for a while. During my sports diving era, I joined the RNR, the Royal Navy Reserve with HMS “Flying Fox” who are based in Bristol, and began training as a ship’s diver. I stayed with that for around 2 years, and spent some time on the minesweeper “HMS Carron”.  In 1990 my interest turned to Windsurfing & Golf, and then after moving to Spain in 2005, I continued with my passion for Golf and also played some Tennis as well as getting in some snowboarding in the Sierra Nevadas (Spain) and some other resorts.

In 2008 I began writing a diary as a pastime, I later had ideas for a book and began writing in earnest. After a few aborted attempts in the beginning, I have now written several novels.

What inspired me.

I wanted to write a book with a background that I was familiar with. Most books I read are based in America, so I decided I wanted to write about something closer to home.

I lived in Cheltenham for several years and thought it was the ideal setting for “Moondance”. The story line really just came from nowhere in particular. Although the characters in the book are purely fictional, some of the character names are of friends and family.

The actual writing of a single book takes me about a year to complete, working on it in my spare time.

“The Major” was an idea that came to me after reading a dozen books or so, from which I got my basic storyline, then I found that a variety of ideas just flowed as I wrote. Again I endeavoured to incorporate places I knew; the Cotswold’s and Painswick in Gloucestershire; Guardamar and LaMata in Spain. 

“Luke” was to be a different genre of book. I wanted to try my hand at a ghost story, however my intentions became diverted as I wrote this and although there is a ghost in the story, it did not turn out to be a true chilling ghost story that i intended but it has a satisfying twist to it.

“Sacred Bones & a Diary”. I wanted to widen my scope a bit so I had an attempt at an adventure with a little action thrown in, this book took me two and a half years to finish due to it being over five hundred pages long and containing a lot of dates and detail. It entailed a lot of research but was very satisfying to finally complete it.

“Sanctuary” was also a satisfying book to write because it has a lot of reference to diving which was one of my passions in years past, so creating a story based around a Navy diver had a pleasing result.

Now I decided it was time for something different from the crime and violence that I wrote about in my previous novels, so I tried my hand at a script containing my type of humour and based on what I would love to find happening in a typical Village. This would be “Stinkley Bottom”.

My Influences.

My main influences are the Authors; James Patterson; Michael Connelly; Jeffery Deaver; Ian Rankin; Clive Cussler; Tom Sharpe.

Favourite part of self publishing.

My favourite part of self publishing, has to be when you receive and hold that first copy of the book that you have produced and worked hard for.

There is also the satisfaction of having control of each stage of the process.

My advice to any aspiring Authors.

My advise to anyone thinking about writing a book is “have a go”, what have you got to lose? Once you get those first few chapters written down as a rough draft, you will want to continue. Let the story flow naturally don’t try to force the storyline. Try to imagine that you are in the story yourself…you are that person walking in that room describing the sight, sound or smell. Ideas will start popping up, so just get it down on paper, you can always edit it at a later date.

Other planned events. 

I make it a priority to inform all my relatives and friends of a pending book release, via E-Mail, Facebook, card, letter or whatever. I make it known at my local bar, my golf society group etc that I write books, the word soon spreads. So unless you want to make millions on your books go down the self-publishing route to get started, otherwise it will cost you mega money for high profile publicity done through an agent if you are lucky enough to be signed up with one that is.

I have now set up this personal website which is www.stevesbooks.co.uk The site displays all my books, along with brief excerpts from each. The site also provides you with the ISBN numbers so that you can look up each book and purchase if you want via the various distributors. I have listed all the major book sellers’ who sell in paperback or E-book. 

Five of my books have been translated to one or more other languages, this being:- Spanish; Greek and French mainly, with German;Portuguese and Italian  translations pending.