Back to the very start.

I was raised on a small hill farm in the west Highlands of Scotland. It lay only a few miles from a small village and only a few miles farther from a small fishing town. The summers seemed long to a small boy and there was always another hill to walk, tree to climb or secret cove to find but the winters were endless.

The farmhouse was old and always cold, no friends for miles and those over hills or rivers so you stayed at home and kept warm sitting by the fire or staying in bed and reading a book by gas light or candle. We were too far from civilization to be on the grid. No television or internet and so you read.

Anything that you could get your hands on.

My father was a stickler for "you want to spend money, you make it" So I worked delivering milk, from a bike with a huge basket on the front before school in the morning and in a shop after school stocking the shelves. I worked in a dairy, packing the milk on a Saturday and in the shop on a Sunday and I spent all my money on books and records.

The Who, Led Zeppelin, pink Floyd and Hawkwind. The novels of Micheal Moorcock, Isaac Asimov, Lloyd Alexander, Richard Adams, Alan Gardner and many others were read over and over.

Now, near our farm in an other village not far away, but hard to get to due to dreadful roads, there lived a famous author. Naomi Mitchison. She had endowed my school with some money and a writing competition the winners of which got taken to her house, a huge sprawling estate and there she personally presented the prizes. I was chosen as one of the winners despite the fact my tale was comprised mostly of ideas stolen from far better writers who had filled my winter evenings with wondrous tales of far away worlds.

Ms Mitchison, was in her Nineties, I think, was imperious despite her stooped form, she smelled of Acetone, a musty staleness and manure but even in her later years she still helped on the farm.

I was overwhelmed to be in her presence, I had read her novel "Traveling Light" knowing that she would be presenting me with the prize. Even though I never understood the full "feminist" meaning of the novel at such young age, I had loved the tale.

That was me set.

Later I worked with Micheal Moorcock on the "New Worlds" Sci-fi Magazine and briefly met Alan Gardner but That seminal story was my undoing. I have written ever since then.