It’s an impressive CV but it's not really me – just snapshots of who I used to be…
I always knew I wanted to work with words. I loved how well-crafted words became living images in my head, and I wanted to do that. But what’s really driven me is the desire to know how it feels to have done something.
I became a national newspaper journalist; then an author (three of my books are in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Permanent Collection); then a band manager; then a radio presenter; then a TV presenter. Eventually I became a novelist, and that’s when I learned how it felt to tell my own stories after years of helping tell others’. It changed my life in the most unexpected ways – I’d landed in a position of relative career safety, but I hated how that felt. So I escaped. I bought a narrowboat and rebooted my life, and that’s how the Boozer Cruiser project was born.
I won’t fit in any genre. I can’t be forced into a box. I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed or numbered – my life is my own. I don’t know where I’ll moor tonight; I don’t know who I’ll meet tonight; I don’t know what I’ll learn tonight. But it’s all fuel for the story engine in the back of my mind, and there’ll be a new story along any moment. It’s an incredible way to live!