​I have just published my third collection of essays this year ‘The Three Hearts of the Octopus’! This collection includes an essay on the arresting work of MK Artist Shelly Wyn-de-Bank who is now exhibiting in London and is going from strength to strength.
Below is a section from the introduction, on Octopuses, which will feature on Blue Planet II at some point I should think. I thought I’d share it with you just because I think they’re amazing:
‘…The octopus does, by the way, have three hearts and like this collection is a strange and fascinating creature. To begin with, they have no fixed shape, they are boneless, and even the Giant Pacific, with an arm span of more than six metres, can fit through an opening the size of its eye (about an inch). They have no stable colour or texture and camouflage themselves extremely effectively. There is no clear distinction between their brain and their body, two-thirds of their neutrons are in their arms. Each arm can act intelligently and independently. They are intelligent problem solvers, can learn and use tools, have a capacity for mimicry, can be sly or deceptive, and some people think they have a sense of humour. If any of my essays are half as interesting as the average octopus, I’d be surprised, but metaphorically speaking, they may have some similar traits’.
My first essay collection I called autobiographical, the second historical, this is both, with some very personal material on my Mum. It’s an eclectic mix with essays on Victorian photographer Francis Meadow Sutcliffe, meeting Ken Loach the film director, Egypt, Hermeticism, writers Levi, Nin, Koestler, Orwell, Moore Shakespeare and Bolt, Ealing Comedies and there’s even a little fiction and a few poems.
Hoping to start work in earnest on a biography or biographical study on the poet Max Ehrmann soon. I also have a new audiobook to work on, another crime novella, from Adam Croft and have just auditioned for a Disney movie. So, you never know, might be Litchborough this week Hollywood next!

Above is the cover art for the latest audiobook I've narrated. This has been in the works a long time, Debbie the author was a close listener to my edits and wanted everything just right. I was happy with that I like authors who care about their work and it makes you feel more involved with the process. 
When I first began narrating books for Audible I was excited when I first auditioned for this book and Debbie indicated that she liked my voice. However, she had already promised the book to another actor, so I was pleased she liked my voice but very disappointed I wasn't going to get to record the book. To my suprize and delight Debbie contacted, me after about a year, to say the other actor after much to-ing and fro-ing had dropped out and would I like to do the book?
I was  doubly excited the second time around and had always felt this was the fish that had got away, now finally in was in the net! 
It's a dark tale with sex and violence that some people would find hard to listen to. But Debbie, the author, has not written it in a gratuitous way and there is a good moral core to the book. Debbie was at times very complementary about my reading saying that she felt it gave dimensions to the story that she hadn't noticed, which was very gratifying to hear. I hadn't realized until recently that the book was long-listed for the UK Crime Writers' Association Debut Dagger Award but it doesn't surprise me because it is very well written which is why I'd really wanted the job.
I'd also wanted the job because although I like the challenge of doing accents sometimes it's nice to do something pretty close to your own accent once in a while. This was set in London and so it was not much of a stretch for my voice, which I always call 'London-overspill'. Anyway, the blurb below gives an outline of the book:
Michael Redford died on his 17th birthday - the night Eddie picked him up off the street, shot him full of heroin, and assaulted him.
Now he's Mikey and he works for Joss. With streaked blond hair and a cute smile, he sleeps by day and services clients at night. Sometimes he remembers his old life, but with what he's become now, he knows there is no return to his comfortable middle-class background.
​Then he makes a friend in Lee. A child of the streets, Lee demands more from friendship than Mikey is prepared to give. But the police are closing in on them now and Mikey's not sure anymore who he really is - streetwise Mikey or plain Michael Redford

I've just completed an audio version of my book Penumbra which I published back in 2015. I have slipped this project in inbetween much other work so it was good to finally complete it and I'm pleased with the results. I was especially happy with the cover simply because I did the artwork myself. I'm no artist but I enjoyed doing this pastel and it's nice to be able to utilise the little art I have produced in some practical way. The smaller the image the better it looks!