Long, long ago, longer than I care to remember, I stood in Charing Cross Road and stared in awe, half unbelieving, at my baby sitting proudly in the window of Foyles.  I even took a photo.

I thought this success made me an established author and that therefore from that point on things would get easier.  But they didn’t.  For life intervened: children, the need to earn money … you know the story.

Well, I’m back now … and how the world of publishing has changed since I was last in print.  The traditional industry is now dominated by a handful of commissioning editors frightened to take a chance because of the cost of failure, while at the other end of the spectrum, the Brave New World of unfiltered self-publishing is drowning in an ocean of uneven content.

My background is a little different from most.  My mother was a painter and set designer at the Old Vic and my father was an author with 13 books published, so I grew up in a literary environment.  But I studied the sciences.  Perhaps it is not surprising then that for my career I chose technical writing.

Now, with hundreds of thousands of (extremely boring) words published, I am turning to fiction, a rather belated attempt, I suppose, to follow in my father’s footsteps.

Whether I succeed or fall flat on my face we will have to wait and see.