Throughout my school years and late teens, I was always writing silly stories and rhymes. I’d leave notes out for my Mum, saying I’d run away to join the circus or draw cartoons of my brothers and their friends with little poems.
When I was 19, I moved to Glasgow and did an introduction to media course. This allowed me to get experience of writing for journalism, (I did a piece on 9/11 and another on racism). I then followed this up with a HNC creative writing course. Here I had the opportunity to write short stories, radio adverts, a screenplay for television and a movie script. My lecturer predicated that I’d have my first novel published by the time I was 25.
And although I was getting lots of positive feedback on my pieces, I wasn’t brave enough to see writing as a full-time job. To the disappointment of my main lecturer, I applied for university courses that I saw as providing a stable job. Writing was surely just a hobby for someone like me.
As soon as university was finished, I didn’t even hang around for graduation. I was off to Australia. I spent two years working in several roles for the Victorian State Government and maximising the most of any non-working hours. I joined a football (sorry, soccer) team and by chance they all just happened to be Scots in Australia too.
Once I got back, I joined my current employer. Fortunately for me there always seemed to be opportunities to put my passion for writing into use. For example, I used to write our departmental newsletter, and I even had the opportunity to write and film a comedy script for a large event. I was posted overseas for six months, and I would write a weekly update to my colleagues and again I started to get the feedback that I should do something more with it. So here we are. In February 2022, I attended a two day writing for children course and Allie Skye was born.
