Though having an interest in writing at secondary school and dabbling a bit whilst he was working in London, it wasn’t until 2004 when Simon Woodward’s interest really took off, when he decided to write a book for his daughters as a Christmas present.
From there everything escalated; finishing the book, sending it to a professional editing agency, being told it needed a lot of re-work (the story was cool but the way it was conveyed was crap), taking beginning and advanced creative writing courses through Southend’s Adult education college, re-writing the book, getting an agent, having the book published, becoming involved in Southend Book Fair, starting a writing group with course members, publishing 11 anthologies of short stories and verse with Writers Anonymous writing group, completing 3 screen writing courses and being given the opportunity to represent the Written Word as part of Southend-on-Sea Arts Council (SOSAC) in 2010. Not much has happened except, handing the reins of the book fair over to SOSAC, resigning as a SOSAC member, and finally resigning from Writers Anonymous in 2015, to leave him time to create more written works and especially focus on his novels. With a rewrite of his first kids’ fantasy fiction completed and sent to a publisher, he is now concentrating on completing his second horror novel steeped in the paranormal, whilst enrolled in James Patterson’s masterclass on creative writing.
You may be thinking, “What happened with your daughters?” (or not). Simply put – due to Facebook we are together once again and they are both doing very well.