Normally in my blog, <a href="http://spiesliesandpies.blogspot.com/">Spies, lies and pies</a>, I usually write about what I'm currently working on, with occasional book reviews, short stories, music reviews, general middle-aged man rants about youngsters, and amusing pie pictures and links to other sites and blogs.

However, as I've been given access to Trestle Press, I thought I'd tell the tale of why and how I started writing.

I was never any good at English at school, but I've always enjoyed reading. In fact I failed 'O' level English the first time round. It was my handwriting, you see. Very poor. In the pre-computer age, handwriting was king and my writing was about five hundredth in line to the throne, twice removed.

Despite the poor handwriting, I first wrote something of substance when I was sixteen. I had a weird dream that had to be written down. It involved inept spies, moped riding drug runners for a pizza shop and green plastic frogs. Obviously, it didn’t go anywhere.

Then, at about the age of 24, I discovered Irvine Welsh. A lot of people discovered him at the time. I missed punk when it happened (being seven does that to you) but at the time, seventeen odd years ago, dance music had become the new punk with its raves and warehouse parties. Irvine Welsh became the author of that generation.

The punk ideal had been reborn, sort of. My thinking was, if he can write and sell that, anyone can. So I had another go. I did and wrote about 20,000 words of a book about a modern revolution. The problem was, partying all weekend and spending half the next week recovering doesn't mix well with writing. Funnily enough though, part of what I wrote back then became the end of The Bailout.

I started writing again in the year 2000. Mainly short stories. Computers and spell checks had made writing a lot easier for me. At the time, I had a very slow AOL dial up connection but AOL had various forums and chat rooms where I met other budding writers. It was fun. The Internet was fairly new, and writers from all over the world were sharing short stories and talking to each other. Anyway, I got half way through writing a book about a spy called Barry, but a change of jobs and personal circumstances left me with less time in the evenings to write, so I again gave up.

2007 saw me writing again. This time, after two years I eventually finished a book, Spies lies and Pies (or The Spy With Eczema as it's now called.) I carried on writing and wrote a short story for the Alibi Crime Writing Contest. I quickly found that crime was a genre I much preferred. My story didn't win the contest, but Out Of The Gutter magazine took it instead. I then found loads of webzines that took short stories of a crime, noir and pulp nature and I became hooked. Since then, I've written another book, The Bailout, and I've nearly finished another, Seven Daze.

Alongside those, I've also written a series of mini-novellas, Bites of Grime. These are separate tales about the underbelly of society, but several of the characters reappear from time to time. The first two in the series, <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Das-Slap-Bites-Grime-ebook/dp/B0062CWSC8/">Das Slap</a> and <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Life-Rags-Bites-Grime-ebook/dp/B006CZIGIK">A Life In Rags</a> have been released by Trestle Press, with more to follow.