Simon Woods

Though having an interest in writing at secondary school and dabbling a bit whilst he was working in London, it wasn’t until 2004 when Simon Woodward’s interest really took off, when he decided to write a book for his daughters as a Christmas present.

From there everything escalated; finishing the book, sending it to a professional editing agency, being told it needed a lot of re-work (the story was cool but the way it was conveyed was crap), taking beginning and advanced creative writing courses through Southend’s Adult education college, re-writing the book (as Simon Woods), getting an agent, having the book published, becoming involved in Southend Book Fair, starting a writing group with course members, publishing 11 anthologies of short stories and verse with Writers Anonymous writing group, completing 3 screen writing courses and being given the opportunity to represent the Written Word as part of Southend-on-Sea Arts Council (SOSAC) in 2010. Not much has happened except, handing the reins of the book fair over to SOSAC, resigning as a SOSAC member, and finally resigning from Writers Anonymous in 2015, to leave him time to create more written works and especially focus on his novels. With a rewrite of his first kids' fantasy fiction completed and sent to a publisher, he is now concentrating on completing his second horror novel steeped in the paranormal, whilst enrolled in James Patterson's masterclass on creative writing.