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| When I was about fourteen, growing up in Warwickshire, England,
I read a book that made me decide right there and then that I wanted to become
a writer. At least that's what I always tell people. The book, I go on to
say, was 'Catcher In The Rye'.
In fact I'm not sure that there was any one book or a single defining moment that formed my ambition. Probably the truth is that it happened over a long period of time. I grew up reading about The Famous Five and Biggles. Later I graduated to Alistair Maclean, Harold Robbins and whatever else was on my parent's bookshelf, and I think they all influenced me as much as Salinger's famous novel. Having said that however, there was one book that I read around that time which did eventually play a direct role in leading me to fulfil my youthful ambition, though in an odd fateful sort of a way. It was called The Goshawk by T.H. White. I read it as part of the English Lit. syllabus at school. It was about the author's attempts to train a Goshawk during 1930's England after he became interested in falconry. It so happened that when I read this book I too had an interest in falconry, and shortly afterwards I acquired and trained a Kestrel.
The Snow Falcon is about a character who is shunned by the small community to which he returns after a long absence. It is the story of his journey to redemption, and of the effect he has on the people of the town. The part the falcon plays is both metaphor and literal and gives the novel a unique slant on a theme that has been written about before, as have all themes. The thing is that the idea came from my own experiences raising a falcon and from The Goshawk, which I read all those years ago. It seems that my ambition to write was not only inspired by the books that I read as a boy, but curiously it was one of those very books that eventually helped to fulfil that ambition. The journey in between was a bit convoluted, but here I am. The Snow Falcon was published in 1999 and since then I have written five novels in total and a screenplay (of The Snow Falcon). I live in New Zealand again with my wife, Dale, and our two boys and am at work on a sixth novel and another screenplay. If you're interested you can read about my thoughts on why I write, by clicking on Why I Write. |
Fast-forward about twenty-two years. After spending a
long time in New Zealand I was living back in England having fled a failed
business. At thirty-seven I was married and my wife had just given birth
to our first child. We were broke and had no income. Though I hadn't written
anything since a few abortive attempts at short stories in my early twenties,
for some inexplicable reason I decided that this was an ideal time in my
life to write a novel. The short version of this story is that over the next
two years I produced three unpublished novels, and then when I was about
to give up I wrote The Snow Falcon. It was eventually published in
something like fourteen languages and launched my writing career.