Rick Rawes

On the about us section you have a nutshell. But seeing as how this is not taking up precious space in a paperback, nor gracing an Amazon or Goodreads author bio which is snappier than a crocodile sandwich, I guess I can go into a little more detail. If you like. If not, feel free to browse other more exciting sections of the website. I hear there’s some great books, or whatever, on offer.

So, where to begin? It seems a little trite to start with my birth – while I was there, I wasn’t exactly paying attention. Plus, I didn’t start writing until a bit later, anyway. I guess the biggest thing growing up was an appetite for stories. Any stories. Saturday morning cartoon? Fantastic. Kids book with inept magick users? Yup, I especially like the pictures. Any story.

Why? Even at a young age, stories were an escape. They were windows into other worlds – far more than my own little slice of Cheshire town life. Without stepping out from your door, you could sail with pirates, fight over chairs on behalf of a Jesus-Lion, psychokinetically destroy bullies. All sorts. There were worlds filled with colours you’d never seen, ideas you’d never thought and people of all backgrounds. There were people of other colours! There were boys who had earrings and girls who wore leather jackets and smoked cigars! There were beasts and monsters of all forms – including the human. Everything lay within those pages, or within those movie scenes, or through that controller. The world.

For a young burgeoningly gay kid, growing up in the nineties, in possibly the least diverse Northern town in existence, stories were a portal to somewhere else. Anywhere else. And when I realised I could create those portals myself? That I could control where the story went and how things went down? Well, then I was sold.

I like to say that my first creative work was a little “Tv Series” I called ’til the End of the World. Short stories about teen friends who fought vampires, demons and the forces of darkness. Yes, I realise very well the influences. I wrote them alone in my bedroom, on my own personal computer not much different than the one I write this one on now – only a million times older. They were miniature ways of exploring issues I felt were relevant to me which were one step removed. People lived, people died, people came out and people fought bad guys. I shared some of them with the people around me, but eventually life takes over.

The big one came in 2006, when I’d just turned 18 and was about to head off to the University of Manchester to study Psychology. The pieces started to come together for me; in a way they never had before. Swarthy openly gay psychologist? Enter Dr. Rick Carter (believe me, people have tried). His best friend? A science-geek, but also extremely angry redhead. Hello Dr Sandy Harris. Hot Spanish love interest? Ex-special forces archaeologist? Tough-as-nails CEO with the world outside the office spinning out of control? Ben, Andrew and Ruth made themselves known. It wasn’t just a story idea I had anymore, it was turning itself into a book. A book I could write. And damn did I write it, every single word. I still have that first copy, somewhere in my archives. I finished it, on February 18th, 2009, sitting in my bedroom at my parent’s flat, realising I had better get a move on with my dissertation now. A full, 126,000-word manuscript sat there in the folder.

And then…nothing. I sent a few tentative cover letters out, tried to speculate with publishers I found online. And in return? A wall of silence. Absolute. Not even a “please don’t send us this crap again”. Just nothing.

I told myself that was that. I was never going to live a life emulating my heroes, the literary giants like Stephen King or Michael Crichton. I was a nobody, possibly with or without talent, shouting into a void. Friends would politely read a chapter or two here and there, but otherwise, it was best to put such childish things to bed and move on. Get back to real life.

So, that’s what I did. I finished my degree; I went and became a secondary teacher. I got married, I moved jobs, I got promoted, I made friends. And I still enjoyed stories, just as the recipient. I watched so many shows and movies, I read everything I could get my hands on, I played every game where I didn’t have to stare down the barrel of an AK-47 with an eleven-year-old sailor swearing in my headset. Life went on.

But writing is a habit. A bit like smoking or having one too many chardonnays. It’s an impulse that doesn’t ever really go away. Ideas would come and go, sometimes I would jot them down with a ‘that’s nice dear’ approach and then toss them into a drawer which grew ever more stuffed with time. It was sometime around 2016 that I picked up the typewriter (turn of phrase, it was a laptop) again and tickled the not-quite-ivories. Looking back now, I guess it was another need to escape that drew me to it, to explore imaginary worlds again. I started all over again, the same story but told by a somewhat more confident 28-year-old me. And damn, it was better. Miles better. Still, the same impasse was coming – publishers ignored me completely in 2009, why would that have changed in a magickal 7 years?

It didn’t. I learnt about self-publishing instead, about the Kindle Direct Publishing platform. I learnt other people did it and then slammed shut the lid of the ark of the covenant once more when I started to understand the term ‘shifter’. It didn’t matter that I would be competing against the likes of ‘Werewolves to Lovers II: The Mooning” (the selling power of which is staggering, and I am in awe of), there was a way to share what I had written with the world and so I would do it. I could do it. With the click of a button.

And oh, with that, I was back on the crack again. From 2017 to 2019 I self-published five books. Heroes & Demons was quickly followed by the unrelated but still fantasy-like Avalon. Genre mixing became my thing as I pivoted onto Proud Marys, a friendship dramedy which was born out of an idea for a jukebox musical by my ex-husband. I swung over to psychic horror with Insomniac before returning for my first sequel with Hope & Fury. I was a machine, with a god-knew-how-many-year plan, and a determination to write again. And then I stopped.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s tough self-publishing. The market is saturated with people sharing their works. It costs soooo much money to do it ‘right’ (according to everyone trying to sell you their products and services). People don’t really like reviewing or rating, so its an uphill battle. But it wasn’t that which stopped me writing – I continued to write (hence Avalon: Faerie Tales that sat on the shelf for four years) – it was life. Once more, getting in the way. Work, relationship troubles, COVID-19 pandemics, crippling anxiety in a mad-arse world determined to march to the right like good little Storm-troopers. It’s a lot.

Therapy has helped. Meeting the love of my life has helped. Deciding that if the world ends, I want to go down clickety-clacking has helped. Tomorrow isn’t guaranteed. For any of us. Happiness is not an entitlement, it’s a choice. For all of us. I share my stories, and I suppose now my ‘story’, because in the writing of it I’ve come to realise that I want to. Someone, somewhere out there (perhaps dare I dream even a few ‘someones’) has read something I have written and been lifted away from their lives for a few moments. I have done for someone else what my heroes once did for me.

And that is what keeps me going.

Peace & love y’all.

31st July, 2025

Leeds, West Yorkshire