i woke up with a gun at my front door...
my parents forced me to at least stick around until i finished my last exam, but after that i was a free agent. as soon as school was over, i smoked a joint, grabbed my backpack and hit the road.
the very first morning out there on my own, i woke up in the forest with a barrel of a shotgun poking through the door of my tent. “git orff my fuckin’ land.” it was the gamekeeper, looking out for the interests of the landed rich. and so began a pattern that was to continue for the next ten years. constantly moving on, constantly looking for something that was always just out of reach.
in the words of a song i wrote much later: “you can’t catch the train if you don’t pay the fare / you’ll never get to heaven on just a wing and a prayer.”
i'm gonna work my way around the world
i come to creative writing from a journalism background in london and the middle east, where i published stories in publications including The Independent, the London Evening Standard and the Gulf News. prior to my writing career, i explored a variety of employment options, including agricultural laboring in new south wales, english teaching in catalunya, and dishwashing in tel-aviv, memories of which occasionally seep into my work.
i’m an inattentive member of the shambhala buddhist community as well as a yoga teacher for the YMCA. as an artist i exhibit photo-based works describing intense internal states correlated to landscapes of the west, and perform my own sassy brand of rock-and-roll with the vancouver-based ‘kings of kavorka’.
you don't need permission for anything
my whole life I’ve been dedicated to the ethics of punk rock. you don’t need permission for anything. you can crush us, you can bruise us, but you’ll have to answer to the guns of Brixton. and now in my writing i try to stay loyal to the spirit of punk, and the loners, losers, outcasts and outsiders that the music spoke to. you ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated?
Get the first three chapters of 'Hotel Amnesia' for free!
And be first in line for exciting news updates as we get closer to the publication date