Ian Martin only began writing seriously 10 years ago at the age of 50. He used to wonder why his muse had waited so long before giving him the nod.
“But now I understand her strategy,” he says. “Mainstream publishers would never have touched the stuff I write. Years of humiliation and disappointment might have been too much for me to bear, and maybe I would have succumbed to full-blown alcoholism and drug addiction, and ended up by committing suicide. To save me from such a fate she held back until technology advanced to the point where I could safely sidestep those obscurantist gatekeepers trying to prevent me from getting to my readers. Now I can write what I like, put it up on Smashwords and Amazon, and share the contents of my mind with anyone warped enough to enjoy my brand of dark humour.”