July 2023

*** Self-indulgence alert – apologies ***

** Sweary words, too. Sorry, I have to be me. ***

I suffered clinical depression (chemical imbalance in my brain) for the first fifty years of my life. Then my amazing wife, Maaike, made me get help. I got medicated and literally (and I mean literally “literally”) within days, I was transformed. Which was nice, because after 50+ years of absolute mental hell on earth, I finally got to understand that I have an illness. I’m not a worthless piece of shite, or a loathsome waste of oxygen, or an idiot always too stupid to understand what everybody else around me seems to “get” without effort.

I had, and have, a medical condition. A treatable medical condition. Like Diabetes. Or Migraines. Or any number of other conditions that other people live with but don’t interpret as cosmic evidence of being an ugly and unwelcome and embarrassing carbuncle on the arse of the universe.

During those same fifty years, I dreamed of writing and “being a writer”, but the aforementioned self-loathing and fundamental belief in my own worthlessness smothered any effort I managed to muster to realise that dream. After my amazing wife, Maaike, helped me to get help, I started the long process of rebuilding my self-confidence.

I took what even my heathen mind can call “a leap of faith”.

Crime fictiony events like Bloody Scotland and Bute Noir and Harrogate and the wonderful, cosy, Crime & Publishment, do far, far, more then just let people meet their idols or booze-and-schmooze. They offer people like me an environment where we are encouraged to believe in ourselves, to trust the opinions and judgement of people with massive amounts of *lived* experience and zero interest in false-flattery or ego-stroking. And when someone whom you admire and whose opinion you trust tells you you can write, how bloody idiotic is it to question their better judgement, and their objectivity, and their *lived* experiences and the wisdom that brings?

Hence, a leap of faith. When the wee bastard poison parrot is telling me I’m shit and I should know I’m shit, I tell it to fuck off because such-and-such seems to believe in me and her/his/their judgement is about a gazillion times more reliable than the PP’s nasty, snide, destructive, toxic, and never-ending campaign to sabotage what – I’m finally starting to believe – is something I actually might be pretty good at.

I’ve just signed a three book deal with the talented Kate Smith at Storm Publishing, brokered by my excellent agent, Kevin Pocklington of The North Literary Agency. And while my inner idiot still irrationally fears they’re all wrong or playing some huge Truman Show style trick on me, I have enough sense to choose to believe that these people – lovely and kind and supportive as they very much are – are ultimately business people, and if the product they’re hoping to sell (me and my writing) wasn’t damned good, they would not invest their time in me.

Fuck the parrot. To hell with Imposter Syndrome. Attend events. Make friends. Not “contacts” you “networked with”. Friends. Write. Then ask (nicely, of course) for feedback from people whose opinions you trust. Then write some more. Then some more. And never, ever, EVER, give up.

Never.

Onwards and upwards, always.

xxx