About WJG

… giving you the beady eye.

Having been launched in the same year as Sputnik and got excited by space with Apollo 8, I wrote my first book at age eleven, a non-fiction study of the Apollo 10 mission, most of which was plagiarised from newspapers. 

Between reading novels, I studied engineering, worked as a computer designer for a couple of years, then returned to university to do research.  Eventually I went freelance as a consultant and, between projects, started writing, trying my hand at a thriller, which turned out not to be very thrilling. 

A Horizon programme on TV, talking about the immense distances between heavenly, bodies set me thinking on whether it would be ever possible for humans to travel to the stars.  That became ‘Fun and Games: engine (and other) trouble on the way to Alpha Centauri’.  It’s a book full of engineering but also of humanity – imagine a small group confined together in a spacecraft for eleven years.  How are they going to stop themselves from going insane on the way, and then what are they going to do when they get there?  So one book became three.  All now available from Amazon in paperback or e-reader form.

Recently I have been posting a review of every book I read here on WJGBookReview.com, largely to improve my own writing by considering in some depth what makes one book great and another terrible.

I am also one of the founders of Wylye Valley Writers, a showcase for local writers and which runs occasional writing skills courses, which I convene.