By someone who should really be rewiring your microwave, not typing this nonsense
Writing. Yes. That peculiar act of dragging symbols across a page in the hope they make some kind of sense. It’s a bit mad when you think about it. And for most of my life, I treated it with the same level of enthusiasm as a wasp in my sandwich.
See, writing never made much of an appearance in my childhood. While other kids were off pouring their hearts into little notebooks with unicorns on the cover, I was neck-deep in Lego bricks and the guts of broken electronics. At fourteen, I could take a busted television, poke it with a soldering iron, and bring it back from the dead like some kind of socially awkward necromancer. Radios too. They were child’s play. And bicycles? I could dismantle one before breakfast and have it reassembled before your toast popped.
But writing? That never entered the picture. It wasn’t even in the same neighborhood. To me, writing felt like trying to knit fog—something soft, vague, and ultimately useless if you’re trying to fix the antenna.
Now, I did end up part of the school paper once. Not because I had the soul of a journalist burning inside me, mind you, but because it meant I could escape the tedium of classroom life and lurk around the printing room pretending to be important. I did menial things—fetching, carrying, maybe pushing a few buttons and nodding a lot. I even got roped into a symposium on journalism once. That was a day I’ll never get back. The speaker could’ve written The Lord of the Rings and discovered gravity, and I still wouldn’t have cared. You can’t make someone fall in love with the violin by hitting them over the head with it.
And yet, despite my complete indifference to writing, I’ve always loved reading. Especially history. To me, history is better than fairy tales because it actually happened—and involved real lunatics. It’s kings, wars, plagues, betrayal, all the juicy stuff, just without the need to suspend disbelief. In England, this reading habit flourished because let’s be honest—British people will read anything. On the Tube, at the chip shop, in the bathroom. Doesn’t matter where or what. I once saw a security guard reading a paperback on Roman sewage systems like it was a thriller. I loved that.
So I read more. I dived into physics books, because the universe is bonkers and I needed answers. I read about travel, which scratched the itch of going places without ever having to deal with airport security. I read philosophy, which is great if you’re the sort of person who enjoys being confused by people with Greek names. And I even dipped a toe into psychology, which, if I’m honest, felt like someone took common sense, ran it through a blender, and served it up with a smug face.
But no romance novels, thank you very much. Those glossy covers with windblown hair and improbable muscles? Absolutely not. They creep me out. Like being winked at by a mannequin. I understand why some people enjoy them, but for me they’re one step shy of a restraining order.
Now here’s the plot twist. The universe, in its infinite wisdom and wicked sense of humor, decided to wallop me with one of those life moments. You know the kind. The bottom falls out, the sky turns grey, and you suddenly find yourself staring at your hands, wondering what the hell just happened. And in that pit of despair, I did something utterly unexpected.
I picked up a pen.
It wasn’t a grand gesture. No bolt of inspiration. Just an old, battered notebook and a vague sense that something needed to come out. The first scribbles were grim—full of shadows and sorrow and late-night thoughts you usually shove into the back of your mind and pretend aren’t there. I wrote about things that hurt. Things I couldn’t say out loud without sounding unhinged.
But slowly, as the heartache started to heal, the doodles changed. I began to notice life and the world around: a single leaf playing in the wind, the monotonous sound of rain on the roof and on the streets, how the sight of snow lifts up my soul, the way the day moves on whether we notice or not. And I started to write those down too.
Then I stumbled on the quieter, earthier works of Ray Bradbury—not the Mars stuff, but the ones soaked in memory and nostalgia and… Illinois, for some reason. I didn’t know anyone could write so beautifully about cornfields and old towns, and somehow make you feel like you were there, smelling the dust and hearing the cicadas.
And then there was Bill Bryson. The man writes like your wittiest friend down the pub who also happens to know everything about everything. He made writing feel accessible. Fun. Like something you could do while waiting for the kettle to boil.
So I kept writing. Little things, mostly. Observations. Reflections. Doodles, I called them. Because that’s what they felt like—meandering thoughts scrawled in the margins of a life spent doing anything but this.
Twelve years have passed since that first, heavy-hearted scribble. And I’m still at it. Writing about whatever pops into my head. Not because I suddenly consider myself a “writer” (heaven forbid—I don’t own a typewriter, nor do I sip red wine while gazing meaningfully at sunsets), that title belongs to people who wear scarves indoors and argue about semicolons, but because I enjoy it. The act of capturing a fleeting thought, giving it shape, and maybe—just maybe—making someone smile or laugh and forget about life’s stresses for a while, because of it, makes it all worth it.
So no, I’m not a writer. I’m a tinkerer with words now, same as I was with wires and wheels. Still fiddling. Still curious. Still very much winging it.
I’m just doodling, frankly, that’s good enough for me. And what fun it is.
And before you wander off—just a quick, friendly nudge:
Hidden Alignment is now live on Amazon. The paperback is ready right now, waiting to be picked up and taken along for the ride. The eBook arrives May 12—so if you prefer reading on a screen, it’s just around the corner.
If you enjoy stories that quietly pull you in and then refuse to let go—where one small detail leads to another, and suddenly you’re far deeper than you meant to be—this one is very much worth your time.
There’s a QR code below for the efficient among us, and a link just beneath it for everyone else.
Please do have a look. You might start with curiosity… and end up several chapters in before you realize what happened. Thanks!
A Kings 
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