Ian has been writing stories since he could pick up a pen and had a bit of success with publication in school and college magazines.
Then he found motorbikes, girls and beer - which inevitably lead to work, marriage and children - all of which took up the time that he should have been writing.
Then came the big 40 and the realisation that time is running out and it's downhill from here on, so he'd better get his finger out and knuckle down to writing all those novels he had been making notes on for the last 38 years (crayon's count, don't they?)
Since then he has followed the normal run of 'write the big one first and get it out the way 130,000 words' only to see it confined to the bottom draw, along with the fifty or so rejection letters.
It is only now that he has realised that it is only children who luaugh at his jokes and get his sense of humour, so that is the genre he has settled on.
A chance meeting for his wife with a published author at a book signing led him to make contact with an amazing editor, Anne Buhrmann, who has polished his first novel for children - I hate baked beans.