Welcome to my website.

I write fiction, life writing and some poetry and I teach creative writing, mostly through the Open University.In the following pages, you'll be able to read some excerpts from my work. I'll be adding more content soon.

Update

March 2012 - Ordinary Domestic: Collected Short Stories is now available as an e-book from PotHole Press! See my publications page for full details.


December 2011 - Three good news stories this last week or two. First, I've another review in Northwords Now (NW19). It's a review of the Morag Joss novel Across the Bridge, which is set in the area around Inverness. Second, the French edition of the biography I co-wrote with Eileen Munro has now been published by City Editions under the title Le soir, quand je me couche. And third, I'm very happy thatmy short story'Safety Glass' has been selected to appear in e-zine Spilling Ink Review.

June 2011 - My short story Grit has been accepted for the e-zine From Glasgow to Saturn. See details on my 'Publications' page. Grit is one of a pair of short stories written as a way of addressing my Addison's Disease.

May 2011 - just had three haiku accepted for inclusion in an anthology to be published by Cargo Publishing. The anthology, to be called 'AThousand Cranes', has been put together through the thoughtfulness and hard work of a group of Glasgow writers whose aim is to raise funds for those caught up in the Japanese earthquake and tsunami.  Cargo have stepped in as publisher to support this effort and the date of publication is likely to be September. Read more about this venture here.

Spring 2011 - My review of J David Simons' Liberation of Celia Kahn was commissioned by Northwords Now. You can read the review here (reviews section).

In 2010, I was lucky enough to be able to achieve some ambitions, including winning the Robert Louis Stevenson Fellowship 2010. This 'prize' enabled me to spend the whole month of July living in the Hotel Chevillon in Grez-sur-Loing in France - a former hotel which was inspirational to writers such as Robert Louis Stevenson and to painters from the Glasgow Boys - Guthrie, Lavery, Melville, Crawhall, Walton, Henry and Hornel.

This year, I hope to do some more travel in France to undertake research for my Spell in the South novel series. I'm also hoping to increase productivity after some significant ill health in autumn/winter 2010/1. Happily, it looks like I'm making a good recovery!