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Doodle’ (2016), a fast moving, heady mix of crime, humour,
romance and a few more dogs. ‘Too Close to the
Wind’ (publication date: February 2019) is my debut solo
novel. It’s a journey of self discovery narrated by a young
Australian windsurfer and dogs don’t feature in it :-) The best books live with you long after you first experience
them. I re-read Hemingway’s heroic story of survival at sea
50 years later, while writing chapter two of ’Too Close to the
Wind’ (in which Nick, my narrator, is drifting helplessly out
into the Atlantic) and I readily acknowledge his influence.
I’m very fortunate to ‘live my dream’ (to use the jargon of
reality TV), here in El Médano. Now I’m a writer – it’s who I
am! Stories, characters, ideas, words are my obsession
(along with windsurfing, of course)… and my motto is: ‘Keep
Scribbling!’ (at least, when it’s not windy :-) Where did you start with your book Too
Close to the Wind?
When did you decide you wanted to
become a novelist?
Probably when I was 15 and I read Hemingway’s ‘The Old Man
and the Sea’ for my English literature O level. It made a huge
impression on me – as have so many novels since then. In this
era of instant visual communication the written word still has
the power to move mountains of ideas and emotions. Novels
will never go out of fashion – just be reinvented.
Plenty of water had flowed under the bridge before I sat
down to write my first novel—a lifetime of material, in fact.
So it wasn’t easy deciding what should be in it. The usual
advice is: write about what you know and are passionate
about. I asked myself what that might be, and I came up
with these three ideas:
• My life story.
• A novel about a musician.
• A novel about a windsurfer.
Obviously I knew a bit about the first of these, and it seemed
the most straightforward to write, so I started working on an
uk
WIND
SURFING