I was born in Preston in the North of England, into one of the oldest Lancashire mill-owning families. One of my earliest memories is of walking round the Victorian cotton-mill with my father and brother, and being almost deafened by the noise of two hundred looms. That was in Leyland, more famous for motor manufacturing, where I grew up in the 1950s, the eldest of four children. The mill no longer exists – maybe I should write about it sometime.

Like a lot of authors, I’ve worked at a range of jobs. After leaving grammar school I was a laboratory assistant, a weaver in a carpet factory, a clerk in London offices, a farm-worker, picture-frame maker and other things too. Most of all though I wanted to be a rock musician – I played the drums, and then guitar in various bands through the 1970s (I wasn’t very good!).

Luckily, in the late 1970s I found out what I really wanted to do – write! In fact I’d always scribbled poems, stories and song lyrics. I thought I might like to write scripts, so I started going to writers’ groups in London, and got my first play broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 1980. That gave me the confidence to give up my job and go off to study Drama and English. I got my bachelor’s degree, and then my Master of Arts degree at the University of London. After more radio plays I wrote for the theatre, and later on I did television scripts for a BBC soap.

Perhaps the most exciting thing I wrote around that time was a Community Play, which had a cast of over fifty people, with songs and original music. But about the end of the 1990s I at last began to write books, first for adults and then for children, and I haven’t stopped since!

Nowadays I live in an old village on a tidal estuary in Devon, with my partner Lisa who’s a librarian, and our son Nicky (when he’s home from University). Unlike me he’s a real musician, who plays saxophone and bass guitar in bands, and composes too. You can see more of him on www.myspace.com/melosalive.

I like the sea and the countryside, and find long walks good for thinking about things. This is one of the views around our village.

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