Craig Stone

I left school at sixteen with a head full of rocks, a general dislike towards anyone telling me what to do and a belief none of it mattered: because one day I would write the greatest book in the world.

I moved to Spain, I worked for a little man with a missing finger called Juan, who owned the town.

I almost got killed by a freight train when I was lost in a field trying to find the Spanish airport at 2am. I was thinking, instead of being drunk and sixteen, I should really start writing some of the adventure down.

But I was sixteen, so my writing consisted of brilliant sentences scrawled on the back of beer mats I would later eat; mistaking them for dry sandwiches that never fully digested.

I came back to England and drifted into acting colleague, but I was fired after a year for wearing woman’s underwear on stage during a life performance. The moronic, insecure and egotistical director was so angry, he frog marched me out of the grounds and hit me, sprawling me to the ground.

I was drunk and sixteen and weighed nine stone – he was in his forties, sober, and built like an elephant stuck in the doors of a kebab house.

I ended up working in a pub at eighteen: a creepy regular with duck-taped glasses who sold newspapers and still lived with his mum, confessed one night to killing his only friend.

That pub was a city pub, and the guys who drank in the pub worked for the bank over the road. I got to know them, and I was asked if I wanted a career change.

I still wanted to be a writer, I was a writer, but I had never written anything.

I said yes, and ended up working for COUTTS bank. I became so bored; I opened up a word document on my work PC and started writing my first book called Just Bee – a story about a little bee who learns the important lesson about enjoying where you are for what it is. The irony wasn’t lost on me.

Before I lost my soul, I sent an email to thousands of COUTTS staff all over the world, telling them how terrible working for a bank is. That it isn’t worth it and they should leave now. I sent that email, stood up from my desk and walked out. With no idea what would come next or how I would afford my rent.

That is the start of my second book Life Knocks.

I ended up moving to Hawaii, living the dream, travelling the world and then washing back up on the shores of England homeless, broke, and unemployed.

In that time I wrote my first book as a sort of adult, a book I’m keeping to myself for now, because I plan for it to be my third book.

Back in the UK, now homeless and broke I wrote a silly picture book called How to Hide From Humans. And voila, suddenly the publishing world knew my name. I found an agent with Christopher Little in London, and I proudly sat next to Val from Headline who was going to publish my first book.

I was twenty-seven and saw my life changing – with the first book I had sent to an agent.

But life is a rusty chicken spinning on a broken church roof at times, so my agent lost his way and the contracts never signed.

So I drifted into twenty-eight in the same position I had been when I was sixteen: Lost, and with a talent nobody knew about; a talent I was starting to see as more a curse than a gift because I still hadn’t penned anything worth reading.

I found a normal job, somewhere to live...and twenty-eight turned to thirty in the blink of a moment.

And that is when I had to make a decision.

I quit my job, left my flat and walked into a park with a sleeping bag and a pen. I thought that without the phone ringing, and without making coffees I would never drink for others, and the pointless excel spreadsheets, and the people sitting around being safe but living out failures – without all those things, if I just gave it all up, maybe I would make it. Maybe I would write that book that’s been on my mind since school.

So I did.

It really is that easy to change your life, you just walk away from the one you are making.

I quit everything, and lived homeless in a park: my beard grew as my spirits rose.

That book is now my first book published on kindle called The Squirrel that Dreamt of Madness.

The ending of that book I need to fix, and I know I need to – but I was in a bit of a panic. My back was against the wall and it was a work of desperation. And I kind of love that about the ending. So, actually, maybe I will never change it. It’s flawed, it’s rushed, but in those pages are undoubted moments of pure originality and brilliance.

The Squirrel that Dreamt of Madness found me another agent – Sheil Land Associates in London. I found enough sure footing to write another book, Life Knocks.

Life Knocks was shortlisted for the 2012 Dundee International Book Prize. Judged by Stephen Fry and Philip Pullman – an extract of my book was put into the Dundee Prize book and will be available soon in Waterstones.

I am making it, I thought.

My twitter following shot up, people started to read my books on Kindle and leave Amazon comments: almost eighty for Squirrel at the time of writing this, on Amazon.com and UK. 75 of those are five star reviews.

I had strangers telling me how Life Knocks had moved them to tears and how The Squirrel that Dreamt of Madness had them laughing out loud on trains.

My Dad even read both of my books, and I’ve always thought he couldn’t read.

I recently celebrated my thirty-second birthday.

I am still poor, but I am making this happen.

Don’t sell your dream out for safety; the net that catches you is owned by a trawler, and you’ll be taken back to a land that will forever haunt the past behind your shoulder.