I'm a Glaswegian living in Surrey, which is good because it added about 20 years to my life expectancy and generally it rains less here than in the West of Scotland. I have always written stories, since I was a boy, and I've managed to carry that on even though I did a science degree and then work for the UK government. More recently I've been doing a degree with the Open University, which includes creative writing Most of what I write is science fiction, and I was inspired by an entry on Charles Stross' blog to have a go at the National Novel Writing Month 2012 (AKA NaNoWriMo - http://www.nanowrimo.org/ ) and even though I started five days late I ended up writing 50,000 words by the 1st December 2012 (just missed the deadline of 30th November).