I’m a writer, entrepreneur, musician, game designer and digital marketer, based in Cardiff, UK. I trained as a composer at Cardiff University, founded four businesses, and have won two international Origins awards for game development. I live with my wife and co-pilot, writer E.E. Rhodes.
In 1994 I founded Harlequin Games, a play-by-mail business which currently owns and moderates Legends, a game for 60 players, that lasts for years and has a 400 page rulebook! In 2011 Harlequin Games won the Game Manufacturers’ Association Best New Play-By-Mail Game ‘Origins’ award for Legends: The One Ring.
In 1998 I co-founded M.E. Games Ltd., and in 2004 Game Systems International Ltd., which respectively moderate and own the game Middle-earth Play By Mail, which itself is in the Game Manufacturers’ Association Hall of Fame. In 2003 the game won the Game Manufacturers’ Association Gamers’ Choice award for Play-By-Mail.
Throughout the 90s I sang and played bass in Pontypridd-based Crystal Eyes, including appearances on Welsh TV and radio, and in the noughties I unleashed radio-unfriendly prog rock with Random Note Generator.
In 2007, with the support of Ian Livingstone (Games Workshop, Lara Croft) I was a founder and director of Microcosm Games, Wales’ premier Facebook developer.
During this time, I spent five years as a volunteer at Cardiff and District Samaritans, a life-changing experience.
In 2014 I brought iconic magazine Creative Screenwriting from Hollywood to Cardiff, providing daily interviews with the best screenwriters in the business.
Since then I’ve worked as a digital marketer on behalf of Google, and now at Learna, promoting online postgraduate healthcare courses.
My passion is writing graphic novels, with Pat Mills (creator of 2000AD) describing my work as “masterful”. My first, Kristo, is a retelling of The Count of Monte Cristo, set in Stalin’s Russia, and my second, Silicon Heart, is a story of love and prejudice set in the Welsh Valleys of the future.
The most recent is Cryowulf, a gender-flipped retelling of Beowulf, set on a long abandoned space station.
My goal is to gently change the world by writing stories about difficult issues, but to obscure the chilli taste of social commentary in a tasty tortilla wrap of humour and action.
You won’t find any spandex, nor protagonists describing their actions in the third person. You will find stories about diversity, mental illness, religion, politics, post-modern altruism and baby polar bears.*
*No actual baby polar bears. Sorry.
