Peter Brooks

Email: pcbrooks@earthlink.net

Home page: http://baldfatgit.wordpress.com

My first exposure to creative writing came when I was 10 or younger. A question on an exam known as the Ten Plus in the UK provided a couple of sentences forming the basis of a story, and asked the pupil to continue that story, using their own imagination.

I don't remember what I wrote but I do recall being told that my answer was the most creative and imaginative of the group that took the exam.

I really started writing creatively when I was about 11 - some 44 years ago. For 15 years or so I generated short stories, mini-scripts (at most three pages of typed A4) and sketches, almost all revolving around escapades with my friends - as viewed by me - and compiled them into a huge folder.

In my late 20s I reviewed the huge folder, decided it was all crap, and destroyed it. Not one of my better decisions...

Then I moved on with my life, which at the time involved working as a medical research technician in the UK's National Health Service, with technical writing an important part of it, but Computing becoming the main focus.

I was commissioned to write a book for Castle House (Micro Press), and "Mastering the TI-99" was published in 1984. (That commission arose because a friend - Paul Dicks - was approached first but didn't have the time to undertake the task, so he referred the publisher to me. Just in case you thought I was first choice...)

Unfortunately for me, Texas Instruments - the maker of the TI-99 - pulled out of the home computer business shortly before the book came out, which didn't help the sales much.

But along the way I managed to do some investigative journalism for Computer and Software Retailing (now that was fun!), wrote a few letters and a couple of articles that were published (in Personal Computer World and Nature, among others), undertook software reviews (Home Computing Weekly), read and reviewed a dozen manuscripts for my publisher, and accepted every invitation by my editor to write another Mastering book (he would provide the hardware) - but nothing ever transpired.

My publisher then pulled out of the computing publishing business, dashing my plans to write another four TI books.

A few years later I pulled out of medical science and dove into computing science, but didn't stray far from the medical field. After a hiccup while I worked briefly as a motorcycle courier (and got done for speeding - over 100 mph on the M25) I went to work as a "Creative Programmer" for an interactive video company, developing software and graphics for an information workstation that was intended to be the leading edge resource for information on Interferon (you may remember it as the "magic bullet" for all kinds of fatal illnesses).

Among the graphics I produced were an animation of DNA replication, another of chromosomal translocation, and a symbolic representation of an Interferon molecule. It was extremely enjoyable work but it did a number on my eyesight.

The company went kaput and I ended up spending quite some time looking for another contract. Eventually I went back to work for the NHS, but this time for the Unit of Clinical Epidemiology as a Programmer / Statistician.

From there I transferred to a post with the University of Oxford's Department of Public Health and Primary Care, which became my last position in the UK: Computing Officer with the University of Oxford's Health Services Research Unit. You'll find my name as co-author on at least three reports produced by that unit.

Through that position I gained access to what soon became the Internet, and through the 'Net I eventually met - and married - Casey, the love of my life. We celebrated our fifteenth anniversary in August 2010.

Marrying Casey meant relocating to Los Angeles in the USA - for various reasons - and entering a period of uncertain employment that still isn't over (more than fourteen contracts in fifteen years, each one usually ending because of the employer's financial problems - I have never been fired).

During roughly half of that time I concentrated initially on the computing science aspect, but after a few years it became obvious that a writing career was a better choice (better opportunities, even better income) and so I switched the emphasis to Technical Writing.

Through all of this I had not considered a career as a creative writer, which is odd when you recall how many years I spent doing just that as a hobby.

From 1999 onwards I began to make the first serious attempt to establish myself as a professional creative writer. I'm reading, and learning, and thinking, and developing, and being alternately inspired and depressed by the successes and failures of others who have chosen a similar path.

I have no idea whether I will succeed. I have faith and confidence in my abilities, which seem to be the first requirements for any creative writer.

Without those there can be no real commitment - no belief in one's self, so no perseverance.

I realise that to attempt to write an award-winning screenplay at the first attempt would be folly of the first order :).

So my sights are set a little lower: a variety of story concepts (one of the latest being a proposed sequel to Gladiator (2000), based on research into the period).

I have work in progress, some of which has reached the semi-finals of a quarterly WriteSafe Present-a-thon; in fact, quite a few of my concepts have managed to get that far, so I feel I'm driving in the right direction. I have around thirty further main ideas and a couple of dozen subplots to support them, so there's plenty of meat left on the bone.

I have also placed entries in fiction and non-fiction writing competitions, to further test my skills and abilities. I won First Prize in the 2002 Write Thinking 24 Hour Creative Writing Competition with a 2000 word piece entitled "So Long And Thanks For All The Pancakes" (viewable on my StoryLines website - http://www.story-lines.com/stories/HitchHikersGuideToTheRecipes/index.html).

I was also hopeful that one of five non-fiction short stories - entitled "Holiday Magic", "The Last Banana", "Under Cover Job", "Punting As A Water Sport" and "Scattering Ashes" - might do well in the Sixth TooWrite Competition in the UK (these are also viewable on StoryLines), but alas they were easily beaten by others recounting personal tragedies orders of magnitude more impactful than mine.

I do have ideas for movies - a score or more of them - that seem to be workable as far as the concepts go (or so I have been told by more experienced scriptwriting friends), but I need and want to learn to walk first before I try running. Evidence of my first steps can be found at my creative writing website, StoryLines (not that I'm plugging it, you understand :)).

Some of my material was registered exclusively with WriteSafe - usually when it had passed the draft concept phase - but that site is now no more, sadly. But I still maintain the records.

Having obtained representation (Stuart A Bronstein of San Francisco) the stage is set for the next scene - whatever that may turn out to be.

For now my bread and butter derives from my technical writing/editing abilities, which earn me up to five times as much as they would in the UK. I am not expecting - or looking for - fame overnight or riches beyond imagination. I enjoy transferring ideas from one place to another - usually from my head to paper or the Web - and I would like the opportunity to transfer ideas from my head to a slightly different audience, whether through ghost writing books, writing my own novels, writing for a TV sitcom, TV movie, or for something on The Big Screen.

And be paid for it, naturally. We all have houses to run, families to support, bills to settle :)

In addition to my writing I'm also presently intrigued by the DoraBella Cipher - a secret message sent over 100 years ago by Sir Edward Elgar, the composer, to a young friend of the family.

More by good fortune than by academic skill or professional knowledge I have managed to shake some sense out of the thing, and while I haven't decrypted the entire message (or in fact two messages, as I now realise it to be - one in Latin, one in English) I know what steps I must take if a complete solution is to be achieved. The problem is finding the time to take those steps!

I'm hopeful that this year will see a completion of that work - although I've been saying that for several years...

As a direct result of the investigations I have undertaken, I am also pursuing a novel encryption (steganographic) system that is a variant of Rail Fence, which I call Musical Rail Fence (or MRF). It's not intended to replace public key encryption, but it's an interesting exercise in analysis and discovery, nonetheless, and it has potential as a privacy tool. I'm working on it!

And finally, I'm trying to get something tangible out of my grey matter and onto paper (or PDF) with regard to using Microsoft Word to produce creative graphics. A work in progress is available for examination through StoryLines, and my work on the DoraBella Cipher and MRF will be made available similarly in due course.

Interests: Interests: It's hard to find something in which I *don't* have an interest. Gardening, maybe. Oh, and shopping. And Musicals. I have a genetic defect that prevents me from enjoying any of these :)

Published writer: Yes

Freelance: Yes

Published works:

Nonfiction