Growing up in South Lancashire, I was well aware of the old saying about work , “They could write a book about this place. It would be a best seller”. It was certainly true of the BICC factory at Prescot whose main gates I first walked through in 1957. The initials stood for British Insulated Callenders Cables but they could just as easily have stood for the Biggest Individual Collection of Comedians. Like much of British industry, the place has now gone but good memories of many of my old work mates and what was once made and done there still remain with me.

In 1988 I started work in the drawing office of the Central Electricity Generating Board at Harrogate in North Yorkshire. One lunch time, a fellow draughtsman was talking about the Leeds firm Greenwood and Batley where he used to work and he had us all in stitches. As I listened to him I began to think that I could write a novel based on many of the places that I had worked at or knew about. By midnight I had sorted out where and when the novel would be set, a few of the main characters, who they would be based on and the title. I had also written the first page and ready to pass it round my colleagues at work the following day for their comments.

I spent the next eight years writing what I first called “Tales of a Northern Draughtsman”. I only wrote when I felt like it, often after something had happened at work that day or after a colleague had told me something about his or her life and times. It then took me two years to find a publisher but by this time I had caught the writing bug. I went on to write One Spring and One Summer and then my publisher went bust. Fortunately London League Publications soon contacted me and offered to publish my next novel and also reprint my debut novel 'One Winter' which has now sold around 4,000 copies.

As a draughtsman it was always essential for me to make sure that my drawings were accurate and easy to understand. As an author, it is just as important for me to make sure that my material seems realistic and authentic and any events in real life that I refer to are correct too. I have also been influenced by the Chinese writer Lu Hsun who, a couple of years before I was born,wrote: “Always remember for whom you are writing”. That is why I am also keen to get feedback from my readers and particularly from those who I have known or enjoyed working with in the past