Greetings, loyal readers, whoever and wherever you may be! And greetings to everyone else who’s stumbled upon this little nook of the internet where I’ve set up my soapbox.

A handful of months ago (as you may have noted from the site intro blurb), I decided to strike out into uncharted waters. I had a nice cushy office job, and a tidy future rolled out in front of me that would carry me in comfort and stability through to a cozy retirement. The only thing wrong with it was a dream. The dream went way off into the wild woods. Half of me, the go-with-the-flow, play-it-safe, keep-your-head-down part, was on the straight and narrow.

The other half was dreaming. Every time I went into a bookstore – literally every single time – it would bubble up at the back of my head, thinking, “Wouldn’t it be neat to see my name on the shelf there….” And when I was reading, it would harry me with thoughts like, “I could do this.” It would niggle at me, in my smattering of free hours, and often in less free times, throwing up little glimpses of people and places it had found and was haltingly excavating while my other half wasn’t looking. It would rush into my mind with a double handful of story, and force me to run for a pad of paper or computer, to preserve them in, to make a note on a map to come back and dig there later. Always later. When there was time. Or after the kids were in bed, if I had enough juice left in the tank to pick up a shovel and head off into the woods for an hour or two before my body (a habitually uncooperative model) dragged me into fitful sleep.

I was very lucky. I was forced to choose which half of me to kill – the career man or the dreamer. So, here I am, shovel in hand, wandering the wilderness, hitching up the first slopes of the mountain that the half I saved led me to. I’ve already found a couple of places to dig along the way, and hope to have what I found there dusted and polished into presentable shape in the next few months. If you’d like to see how they turn out, stick around! I’m very much looking forward to sharing them with you.

Leighton