I was born in North London, studying at Muswell Primary and Highgate School. I enjoyed writing but preferred science more. We were given reading lists to tackle over the summer. I'd get through about half. One boy in the class would read them all. I still remember one of the stories he wrote for English.
I read a lot of comic books and still have some of them. Favourites were Trencher, Firestorm, X-Men and Iron Man. In fact, one of my first stories was in comic book format, Reg: The Self-Made Man.
After several years studying science and engineering at University, I took a job in Edinburgh for a small start-up called PPL Therapeutics. Along with the Roslin Institute, they created Dolly - the cloned sheep. After redundancy, I worked for Serologicals and Wyeth in Dublin.
On my return to the UK, I joined the public sector, working for Innovate UK, now part of UKRI. I wrote the first Biosciences strategy, created the iCURE scheme and negotiated our first collaboration with another innovation agency. After a break for writing, I did maternity cover in quantum engineering at Bristol University.
My interest in creative writing began in 2007 when I took a creative writing and scriptwriting class in London. I was hooked by the mixture of creativity and process (sequences). I had a play, Firewall, performed at the Montreal Fringe Festival. I write every day and have attended multiple writing courses. Much of my blog is a summary of them.
My initial focus has been plays. I was long listed for the Old Vic 12 and shortlisted for Bristol Old Vic's Open Session. I've written 2 full length plays: Midnight Sunrise and Hit Points and have had 5 short plays performed (Killing Rainbows, Tick-Tock, Tank, A Game of Two Halves, Chainsaw). They've been collected together into a collection called Pieces.
I joined the Bristol Film and Video Society and began making short films, either as writer, director or anything else. So far I've been involved in quite a few (Carless Driver, Dream Rides, Count to Three, Marigolds, Boris, Monkey Bars). Now, as a founding member of DIY Films, I've helped to make One-Life Stand and Edmonds. Most can be found on my Vimeo page.
On the writing side, I've got two novels in a drawer along with plenty of other works in progress. In terms of feature films, I'm finished a sci-fi feature called Orbital and a comedy drama pilot called OUTDOORSMAN.