I’m gonna start somewhere else. I’m gonna start with evolution and longevity. Stamina and manifestation. My first serious mentor David Gemmel says in my first serious writing retreat, ‘It’s not the talent, it’s the stamina.’ It seems like nice words. Words to make us, his students, feel heartened.

But it’s true. I couldn’t have just miraculously been a writer. I couldn’t have found my voice, that day, like I wanted to. It had to mature. Evolve. Longevity plays a huge part in that. And also, I have accidentally been manifesting before I know, officially post The Secret, what manifesting is.

1996. I think that’s when I first met David Gemmel. I also first penned the first draft of In the Ruins of the Big House

 Pillars and Planks is an attempt at fiction. It is set on a plantation before I am radicalised by the Art’s Council and box ticking. Before I have internalised that I am not worth as much and need help. Or else this is the truth, that years of down beating had upset my spirit.

 There is truth to shit like that. David Gemmel was a world renowned fantasy writer. Really attractive. Great storyteller. Very charismatic. Could hold a room. On the first night all the middle class who can afford the £700 retreat — I'm on a bursary — also can afford good red wine that the hosts brings in for them to buy. No profit from it. Just the cottage is in the middle of nowhere, and this kind can’t sleep without red wine.

So, they order their red wine, and they have their accents at the table. I order mine, though I can't afford it. David has his. The red wine comes. The hosts have put their names on their bottle. They open their bottles. They pour their wine into their glass. To me, you open a bottle of wine you invite others to enjoy a glass too. So, I offer it to David. He takes a glass. They are flabbergasted. I suppose I am just good at being teacher’s pet. I’ve always been teacher’s pet. Maybe I hadn’t manipulated it.

Long story short, the next evening David orders a bottle for me and a bottle for him. Pulls me to one side when they are boasting where they’ve been and not been with that pull back in their accent that says they are cultured. He says to me, “I’m from Peckham.' Or was it Spitalfields? Somewhere poor anyway. The whole of him now is fake. He misses people like me.

 Pillars and Planks is about that friendship in a Big House with those dynamics, that no matter how shit life is there will be allegiances and moments of friendship and real life between the sorrow.