So, yeah...that picture's already older than I am. It is my personal Portrait of Dorian Gray. The more I look at it, the older I feel.
I promise to post something a little more recent. At the very least, you now know what I look like, five years younger, with longish hair, while standing in front of an industrial fan. I've since given up the suit, added a ball cap, clipped the locks down to a pixie cut, and I can never find enough fans.
As for my personal backstory, I haven't much to tell. Been writing since I was seven (jumped straight to cursive because block letters were too slow). When I was eleven, my mother bought me a manual typewriter, stuck duct tape on all the letters, handed me a typewriting instruction manual she'd picked up at an auction, and told me to get cracking. (I presume it was because my cursive was a disaster.)
Throughout high school and university, I wrote like a fiend (I was too broke to socialize). But, despite having 40 novels, 65 two-act radio plays and a smattering of short stories, I sold no full-length story until after 20 years of trying to get published. I'd even been shortlisted for the
Unhanged Arthur
for a historical mystery I'd written.