Born 1946 Blackpool, Lancashire; but raised Stoke Gabriel, Devon, England; the whole of my adult life I've been a struggling novelist - with the appropriate number of bread-and-butter jobs - from, among many others, Merchant Navy, building labourer, scaffolder, male model, computer programmer, data control manager in Imperial College, milkman, plumber, demolition, truck driver, residential social worker, laboratory analyst, gardener, groundsman and, for the last several years, a psychiatric nursing assistant. My very last job was as a cashier in an amusement arcade. Since 2003 I've been a self-employed writer/editor/publisher.