Influenced

I’ve wanted to be a writer ever since I can remember. As a child, I would scribble stories and give them to my parents, my overactive imagination filled with excitement and dreams as I felt like being an author was just something you chose to do and it was as easy as that.

Fast forward a few decades and I was in my thirties, still harbouring the childhood dream, yet feeling as far away from it as ever. I worked 9-5 as a procurement officer in a bank, a job that did little to set my creative imagination soaring. Worse than that, due to a combination of lethargy, fear, and a lack of knowledge about the publishing world, I had no finished stories, no readers, and therefore, no writing career.

One day, I refused to let my dream die and I committed to not only finishing books but putting them out into the world. In February 2020, thanks to Amazon’s KDP platform, I began self publishing, and to say it changed my life would be an understatement. It was in January 2021, after the successful release of my title Til Death Do Us Part, that my dream came true. I quit my day job and became a full time writer!

Since then, I have lived my dream, writing multiple books for a growing and loyal army of devoted readers. Along the way, I attracted the attention of two publishers, firstly, Inkubator, and secondly, Bookouture, an imprint of Hachette, one of The Big Five publishers. I continue to self publish, but am officially a hybrid author, regularly releasing titles with Bookouture to reach an even wider audience of readers than I could ever reach on my own.

I wouldn’t be in this position without the support of my parents, my wife and of course, my readers and, as I will teach my beautiful daughter as she gets older - follow your dreams, not the crowd.