My Writing Journey by guest author Andrew Marsh

Val Penny ♦ September 19, 2018 ♦ 2 Comments

Today, I am very pleased to welcome my friend and fellow crime writer Andrew Marsh to my blog to discuss his writing journey. Over to you, Andrew!

My writing journey begins in the 1990’s when, as a geologist, I was part of and heard of many funny things that happened on sites and in design offices. So, I kept a notebook with me and started writing these things down. This opened the floodgates of ideas and soon I began to put together a story based on a significant event and how people got to that event and what happened after it.

And so my first book was born. To be honest, I made a lot of mistakes on that book, it was a good story but I didn’t follow the “rules” of how to get the book ready for publication. With the winnings from my appearance on The Weakest Link I commissioned a printer and self-published it in 2004.

Since then I have been to many writing conferences and have learnt the craft of what and how to take a first draft to a completed manuscript.

My second novel, The Truth, is a crime thriller along the lines of Midsomer Murders meet Quentin Tarantino. I self-published this in 2014 and it is available on Amazon with the links below.

Ebook.

https://amzn.to/2xkdeyY

Paperback

https://amzn.to/2D8OMWZ

It has some 5 star reviews and is a hard hitting crime thriller with adult content.

The Author

I am 54 and spent 23 years as a geologist in the construction industry. Unfortunately, the credit crunch and chasing work took its toll and I became ill developing chronic fatigue syndrome and other ailments. I retrained in NLP and Hypnosis and this has helped me understand myself better and what I can do to help myself.

Three years ago I was diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome and this has made sense of my life and put many things about my past into perspective and given it an understanding. I have always known I was different and now I know why.

Understanding my Asperger’s has opened up my writing to poetry and I have written several poems about my situation and my diagnosis. I find my poetry very cathartic and have presented my poems at events in Glasgow overt the last year.

I am also a speaker, and speak about my Asperger’s diagnosis to raise awareness of the condition and how people on the spectrum need more support to help them understand themselves and integrate with others and society as a whole.