Jul 22

Jul 22 Darren Lewis

Author Darren Lewis

Biography

As I'm sure every author on the planet would say, ‘I love reading.’ In fact, it's not just love, it's a passion. Some of my earliest memories are of reading school books to my parents and then speaking about those stories to my teacher.

I consider myself extremely lucky to have a family that share this passion and by the time I was ten years old, I believe my parents had a book collection that could be counted in the high hundreds. Their collection ranged from horror to science fiction, romance to thriller and at a young age I was allowed to read some of the more ‘adult’ books by Dean Koontz, Stephen King, Isaac Asimov and so on. If I could take one thing away from that experience, it was that I never considered myself too young to read these authors.

My first real love affair with an author happened at thirteen years old when I read a book of my brother’s entitled ‘The Pawn of Prophecy’ by David Eddings. I was enraptured, captivated I suppose, and wanted to read every single book of the series in one go. Here was the problem, however. I had bought my own copies except for book three of a series of five and I'd just finished book two. My older brother had a copy and it's an unwritten rule of the house that whoever buys a book reads it first…no exceptions.

So what did I do?

I waited until my brother went out for the day and stole away to his bedroom and ‘borrowed’ his copy. I read that book in six hours and returned it before he came home. I did feel a bit guilty and waited for the fallout to occur but it never came. To assuage my guilt I'll point him in the direction of this bio and see if he ever knew.

I never really tried writing at that age apart from school assignments as it was something I never considered myself able to do. I might've been able to think of a premise but could never follow through on the story.

I left school at nineteen and entered the print industry where, in various guises, I would stay until the age of 38. During this time I'd found the love of my life and luckily for me, married her. We had a beautiful daughter and a son on the way. Again, I had never seriously written anything while employed in print and with having my own family my time was used up, but in a fantastic way. I will never look back and think I should've been writing during this period as my family and job were my priorities.

Fate stepped in at this point. Redundancies were made at the print company and I chose to accept. At the same time, out of the blue, my daughter, Ellie asked for a story. A story for her. It seemed to be the key to unlocking the ideas trapped inside and my first story ‘Ellie and the Rabbits’ was born.

It took another year but I added two more stories to complete what is now called ‘The Seren Trilogy.’

It was now that my path crossed that of Creativia as my brother (yes, the same one as above!) had also been writing and accepted to be published. I thought I would give it a go as well, not mentioning that I was related to the other Lewis, Creativia was publishing. This was probably the second key moment for me as in my mind it affirmed what I wanted to do now my former career was over and I was fortunate enough that Creativia accepted my stories for publication. I continued with Ellie's adventures and added five more books which are now The Baiulus Series.

It hasn't all run smoothly. Over the last couple of years I discovered, or the doctors did, major problems with the nerves in my feet which means I can't walk as much as I love to do. I had to alter my male driven ego away from being the main bread winner of the family but my wife has never been anything but supportive in allowing me to pursue this path of being a writer. It took me a while to get familiar with though I also love spending so much time with my children.

The most important lessons I learned from all this? If you can, do what makes you happy, not what makes you rich!

Also, it took me a few years to realise I can write whatever I want, whatever I please, and that is freedom.