You already know that Owain Oakwood writes quirky paranormal fiction described on a good day as “Discworld in the Peak District”, and on a bad day as “if the darkness crawling behind my eyes doesn’t get any better, I’m going to need an exorcist.” What you don’t know is that he lives in a cave under Minninglow Cairn, a lifestyle he claims is an occult choice, but is actually a consequence of climbing rope failure.
Owain does not believe anything he writes, except when it is dark, and especially when it is windy.
Ah, writing about myself in the third-person. Terrible habit I picked up back when I was briefly a professional artist, selling paintings. Here’s the first-person version, for those of you who find the third-person the wrong kind of weird. Which includes me.
Am I playing this game on hard mode?
Well, a little. I was born dyslexic, so I had to hang around waiting for spell-checkers to get good. And by the time they had, I’d forgotten writing was what I wanted to do, and had to get several dozen other hobbies out of my system first. I would say that’s what ADHD will do that for you, but the truth is, I enjoyed all those hobbies & careers, and some of them I’ll get to go back to, so I’ve no regrets on that front.
What I neglected to do was a get a creative writing degree, enter journalism, have myself born to famous parents, or acquire a rich benefactor, all of which are positively correlated with future writing success. But hey, everyone has their struggles!
Am I playing it on easy mode?
Yeah that too, because on the other hand I’m genuinely stumped when people ask me ‘where do you get your ideas?’ Growing up I never had a strong grasp of what is and isn’t real and honestly, and I think that helps! At primary school I was always that kid that everyone else would come to for games of let’s pretend. Ideas for novels? I could come up with three new ones before breakfast. The hard bit is sticking with just one long enough to finish it, which is how come I started out with short stories and novellas.
And I wish we were all equal and all had the same opportunities, but we don’t, so it’s true that ‘Lower middle class white man with a British accent’ is hardly the worst starting background.
And do I really live under Minninglow cairn?
Sadly, no. But it would be damn cool, wouldn’t it? File it under (un)life goals. I’m gonna go haunt that place if I ever die. Promise.