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Love of History

Since I was a teenager, I had a great fascination about local history, especially about my home town of Ferryhill, in County Durham, England, and I ran a local history website exploring any of the local buildings and the social history around them.  In the beginning, people mentioned how they enjoyed my level of research and the amount of time and dedication in the level of work and research involved  However, after a while, I could not do any more, and it stalled. There was nothing more to write, and with a full time job as an administrator, and an ever extending family, it was hard to dedicate time to add more to my website.  So in May 2017, I decided with a heavy heart to say goodbye to my old website and start afresh, here.  

Deciding to self-publish

The great things I love about self publishing is that I am in total control of my work, my layouts and designs.  I love writing about dark creepy places and events,  and if you enjoy writing about the things you like too, don't wait forever to get your work out there.  Do it and do it now.  

There are a great many people and organisations whom I owe a debt of gratitude for using their information or their personal material and photographs within my works.  In each of my books, I have listed them one by one, and I am so grateful to all of them.  Finally, to all my current and new readers, thank you so much in believing in my work.  And remember, a good review on Amazon will allow me to reach even more people like you.

Being a self publisher is a deeply thorough exercise: deciding on what I want to write about, I undertake a lot of typing, proof reading, and design work all by myself to get a finished product to the general public which in turn I hope they enjoy.  With self publishing however, my work doesn't end up on a self at WHSmiths or Waterstones, because these types of books are generally done by traditional publishers, who only accept work by agents who act on behalf of an author.  This however may lead to rejection, after rejection, after rejection, and how does a person succeed in reaching the public if all the traditional publishers think about is money?

My reason for writing is I want my audience to acknowledge the people who have long since past (good or bad), realise the importance of where they come from, and make history come 'alive' again.  There is something else which I fully believe is important: writing about history isn't just repeating what everyone else has wrote before, it is about going through the hard, original evidence of things that have happened, and to tear away the shadows of myth and legend surrounding them and get to the stone truths. 

Surprisingly those truths can be scarier than fiction.


 
See my published works