Childhood

I had a great childhood despite my dad leaving when I was about 7. My mum did a fantastic job of bringing up me and my sister. She worked part-time and sacrificed a lot to provide for us. I would only see my dad on a weekend. The thing for me that stands out in my childhood is the area where I grew up. I lived at the top end of Pudsey in Leeds, West Yorkshire and a five minute walk from Fulneck. We would play in the countryside all day disappearing first thing and coming back in the evening.

We played football, cricket, hide and seek or just chilled out at the side of the Fulneck golf course. There was a farm at the top of our street that had a mini railway and we would go up in summer and have rides around the fields which would then go under a tunnel. There was a horse in the field called Dandini and a donkey called Patrick. We would do beck jumping down Fulneck valley of which I write about in A FAR REACHING DREAM and THE HIDDEN PATH HOME. Even in CARD SCHOOL I write about playing frisbee down Fulneck Valley something which I did with my own children.

I know I was very lucky to live my childhood where I did and feel sadness for others who had a bad childhood.

We only get one crack at life so why don't we enjoy it? There are some true hidden gems in this country and Fulneck was mine. It will stay a huge part of me for the rest of my life.

http://www.theaa.com/walks/tong-fulnecks-moravian-settlement-421280

I will blog next time about my new book that I am writing.

Keep reading and I'll keep writing.

Thanks

Andy

http://www.andrewmilnerbooks.com



A view over Fulneck valley

Learning lessons

For most of us our aim in life if is to be good at what we do whether it is being the President of a large organisation, a playgroup leader, an author or a student. The majority of us strive to be good, not necessarily the best but good enough to put us above our peers. As a business leader you want your business to be the best and offer the best service to your customers, the playgroup leader who strives to make the children happy and the parents confident in your leadership, the student who wants straight grade As and the author who wants to have the best seller.

When I write a book I have to like the story first before hoping that the reader will like it too. How can I expect people to read and like my book if I don't like it? How can I expect people to believe in my characters if I don't believe in them?

I'm not brilliant at writing books by any stretch of the imagination and will probably never see my name up there with the world's best sellers, Agatha Christie, Barbara Cartland, William Shakespeare and J.K Rowling. Val Wood's book The Doorstep Girls has made it onto The Guardian paperback book chart at No.9 a fantastic achievement which I can only try to emulate. However they all started somewhere and were not born the best, they had to work at it just like I will try to. It is the most highly paid compliment that I have ever received when someone says they enjoyed one of my books.

I take my hat off to people who work hard to be good and I learn lessons all the time from my girlfriend who pushes the boundaries of being epileptic to run her own business and along with athletes and politicians changes people's misconceptions of what Epilepsy is.

Life is a lesson and I learn all the time. My dream is to have 10 books published. I so far have three published and a few more in the planning stage.

Having the compliment of people enjoying my books is like a compulsion to write more, and write more I will !

Thanks, keep reading and I'll keep writing.

Andy

https://www.facebook.com/andrew.milner.355?ref=hl

https://twitter.com/milnerad

First professional book review

I'm sure by now those who make new years resolutions have mostly quit them. What is it that makes us so sure that we can do things and change our lives just because it is a new year. I always try to be a nice person and help people not because it is January but because I am a human being and we have been put on this planet to look after it and help each other. It's not hard to be civil to each other.

This week I have received my first professional book review and was very pleased when the reviewer said it kept them hooked from the first page. Every author tries to grab hold of the reader and pull them into a world created in the author's head. I am no exception to that. The world of Michael Dawson is not a happy one, unwanted by his Aunt after the death of his parents and very much alone in the world he relies only on himself to get through in an environment alien to him. It is a huge compliment when someone believes in the world and characters that you create.

To watch the project come together is a truly amazing thing as ideas from my head transfer onto paper or word document and become part of a story that people will read. I am so grateful to people who buy my books and take time to read them.

Thank you.

Keep reading and I'll keep writing.

Andy

http://beckvalleybooks.blogspot.co.uk/2015/01/book-review-card-school-by-andrew-milner.html

 

 

New year

Well it's here again.... Another new year, another year older but another year wiser. Another world is being created in my mind and new characters are being born. Anyone of my characters could be real as when I write my books I try and create dramas in their lives. We all know someone who is just like that.. Going from one drama to another.... Just be grateful it's not you. If you want a drama, read a book, it's easier to let someone else have the drama, crisis, call it what you want... You enjoy the peace, let me create the drama for you to enjoy.

Keep reading, I'll keep writing.

Happy new year 

Andy

Christmas

So that time of year is amongst us again. Love it or hate it there are serious consequences to this celebration. Do you know that suicide rates go up at Christmas? People suffer more depression at Christmas and this is the time of year that loneliness takes a much more leading role in people's lives. I am lucky to have a family as most of us are, but there are people who through no fault of their own do not have that luxury. Relationship break ups always seem harder to cope with when the neighbours are having fun and when the 'happy' programmes are on TV. Laughter can be heard in the streets from office parties and family get-togethers. The curtains don't block out the loneliness.

Sometimes we need to spare a thought and just keep an eye on the people who are around us all the time who's lives exist side by side with our own but yet we have no interaction with them. It's supposed to be a time for caring and sharing but how many of us actually do?

I will be working, writing, cooking, baking and cleaning, pretty much like I do most weeks

My next book is well under way and hopefully over the festive period I will be able to give it some time and crack on with it. It's around summer time in the book that I am writing at the moment so I will try and enjoy the sun a bit whilst I have the heating on and will be digging out my scarf.

Have a wonderful time people and keep an eye out for the lonely ones.

Keep reading and I'll keep writing.

Andy

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Andrew-Milner/e/B00CDA8MWI/ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_1?qid=1417681805&sr=8-1
 

Our futures and fears

If I could go back twenty years I wonder if I would have seen myself in the place where I stand today. My life was going down a straight path there were no corners, no roundabouts, no junctions, just a plain old straight road. It's funny how we come away from that straight road sometimes without planning to. We do however we find a way, whether it be through mucky fields or going the wrong way down a one-way street we will come back onto the road to our future. It is maybe not the same one as before, but it's a road going generally in the right direction.

My third book Card School has now been released and as I approach my next project I imagine where I want to be in the future. I want to be happy and successful, don't we all? I enjoy writing books in the knowledge that people read them; that people will read about my characters and get to know them and that the things that happen in my books will be understood and accepted.

A boarding school is not always the first choice for parents or children but Michael Dawson did not have the luxury of choice. At ten years of age he had to deal with the loss of both parents who had been abroad on a church mission. He never had the chance to say goodbye only see you later. He believed when they went, they would return, but they didn't. Not only having to contend with the biggest loss known to a child he was thrust into the full time guardianship of his uncaring Auntie who he had been staying with but only until his parents came back. Now they were not coming back his future had to be decided. Learning that he can only trust himself, and faced with a dark secret in the boarding school where he is placed, he sets out to unravel the answers and find questions to fit. He has no intention of getting too close but ends up being in the direct firing line. When all hope is lost, the person he expects least of all to be there comes to the rescue, but is it all too little too late?.

Michael is a ten year old boy who loses his parents in a car accident whilst they are abroad. He didn't say goodbye, he thought he would see them again so said "see you later." All too often people are taken from us without a chance for us to say goodbye. We should remember this when we fall out with people over silly things and remember - Never go to bed on an argument.

So as people read my new book CARD SCHOOL I will be writing my next book safe in the knowledge that soon my characters will be alive in someone's living room.

I'll keep writing if you keep reading.

http://www.andrewmilnerbooks.com

 

 

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Card-School-Andrew-Milner/dp/1326022989/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1416475735&sr=8-1&keywords=card+school+andrew+milner

Fact Or Fiction, It's All The Same, Isn't It?

Sometimes real life and fiction are not that far apart. When I write about a character I get to know them, they become a real person with thoughts and feelings and interact with the other characters. They live, they feel, they work, they have success and failures and on top of all of those they suffer hurt.

 I am the person that inflicts that hurt on them. I am their creator. I give them the thoughts, memories, things to say and do, I like the characters that I create and I want you to like them too.

 When my characters get hurt, whether it is physical or emotional hurt, it is me that inflicts that hurt on them. I do it without a thought and there's no come back. They just accept their fate and get on with it. Sometimes by the end of the book the pain has been forgotten and they come out on top.

 In real life, we inflict hurt on each other and sometimes it's not intentional. We have things to say which may come out wrong.

Even if it is you who hurts someone else you still experience some sort of hurt yet your feelings are not considered because we tend to sympathise more with the victim.

Usually we hit out at others because we are hurting ourselves, maybe in a different way but hurting all the same. 

 
I try and analyse people the same way that I do with my characters because I spend a lot of time with them. I also put myself in the spotlight a bit too often and analyse myself way too much under interrogation. A nice quiet and peaceful life seems so easy to achieve, yet we have the ability to destroy others people's feelings all too easily.

 My aim when I write a book is to give enjoyment, to draw people close and share my thoughts with them and for them to spend a part of their life in my world. I don't put myself on a pedestal by any stretch nor do I compare myself with God in any shape, way or form, but I am a creator. I give life and I take it away. I make people happy and sad, I hurt people and I heal them. In real life I am a mere person living in the world created by a far better author than I am.

Come and share my thoughts and live with them for a short time.

Keep reading and I will keep writing.

http://www.andrewmilnerbooks.com