Once upon a time, all I wanted to do was write a book.
About 20 years ago I wrote a novel called “Own Goals”, set in my home town, Dumfries, and related in a bizarre way to Scottish football fans. I sent it to one publisher who told me he didn’t want it but added that if I could find an agent, he was sure it would find a publisher. These were my glass-half-empty days and I took that as a crushing rejection and thought no more about it.
Soon after that, I met my current literary agent Selwa Anthony and everything changed.
Selwa introduced me to Sandy MacGregor, who, as a young officer in the Australian Army in the early days of the Vietnam War, led a troop of volunteer engineers who not only defused Viet Cong booby traps but were the first to actually go down into the now-famous tunnel systems. Sandy told me about his experiences but I interviewed a lot of the men who served there and got the other side of the soldier’s life; the stuff they don’t write about in military histories.
My wife Sue Williams was approached by artist Eric Lobbecke who wanted her to write a children’s story for him to illustrate. She was too busy but I was keen and the reult was The Koala Who Bounced.
And then there’s Apartment Living which I wrote with Sue , and which led to the weekly Flat Chat column in the Sydney Morning Herald and then, oddly, to the Ultimate Guide to Buying and Renting … which I wrote for Fairfax.
I was approached to write the biography of cricketer Shane Watson but Watto sold only modestly at a time when the sports book reading public seemed to be more interested in bad boys than good guys.
I then revisited the 3 Field Troop story with Tunnel Rats, which has done well and is still selling, and a more expansive story about all the Sappers in Vietnam called A Sapper’s War.
Eric and I also revisited the bouncing koala with The Koala Bounces Back
This year (2013) Simon and Schuster published my biography of bad boy turned good guy Wendell Sailor which contained a few shocking revelations that answered a lot of questions about this genial giant of both rugby codes.
Meanwhile, there is another crime novel in the pipeline although whether it does any better than “Own Goals” remains to be seen.
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