My Humble Beginnings

There’s something quietly powerful about the moment you realise you can create something from nothing but your own thoughts.
For me, that moment came early—though I didn’t know it at the time. I had three sisters, and one Christmas, the youngest, Glenda, received a toy typewriter. She was quite young. I was even younger. Naturally, I borrowed it.
What followed was my first attempt at authorship: a short “family newsletter,” typed with great seriousness and no small amount of pride. I presented it to my siblings, expecting applause, admiration—perhaps even literary acclaim. What I got instead was polite confusion. They read it, set it down, and carried on. No fanfare. No “well done, Steve.”
Still, something had happened. I’d written something, and it had been read.
That original document has long since disappeared—lost somewhere between house moves and international relocations. The trail runs from the UK to New Zealand, back again, then across the Tasman to Australia, with my belongings faithfully (if not always reliably) following behind. I regret losing it more than I probably should. There’s something about first creations—they mark a beginning you can’t quite recreate.
Oddly enough, I didn’t return to writing for many years.
It wasn’t until my late thirties that I picked it up again, this time contributing small pieces to Link-Up, an in-house magazine during my time as a paramedic with the Lincolnshire Ambulance Service. Writing crept back in quietly, without ceremony—much like it had begun.
Later, I wrote about an incident I experienced during the Queensland floods of 2010–11, published in an international magazine. That piece still lingers in my mind, and I may share it here one day.
Around that same period, shortly after moving to Australia, I began my first attempt at a novel. Like many early efforts, it evolved—slowly, stubbornly—over several years. It sat on my computer hard drive for far longer than I care to admit, gathering digital dust while life carried on.
Then came a turning point, in the form of a man you might not easily forget: “Johnny Redpants.” A local character in every sense, Johnny had already written and published several books on the Soul music scene. He’s as colourful as his name suggests—his hair alone cycles through the full rainbow spectrum—and he plays the harmonica with equal flair. It’s earned him another alias: the Rainbow Harmonica Man. He also publishes under the name John Warren.
More importantly for me, he understood the path from writing to publication—and he was generous enough to share that knowledge.
With his guidance, I took the leap and published my debut novel, Elephant Juice. At the time, I had no idea it would become the first in a series.
Since then, that tentative beginning has grown into six published books.
Writing, I’ve found, is a solitary pursuit—but not a lonely one. It’s closer to painting: you start with a blank canvas and gradually layer it with colour, texture, and shape. In the end, the picture is never entirely yours. It belongs just as much to the reader, who interprets it through their own lens.
And to think—it all started with a borrowed toy typewriter, and an audience that didn’t quite know what to say.
SJC. 2026