S C Fowler

I was born in Mansfield and moved to London when I was 20 years old. I worked in various hotels as a luggage porter and hall porter (a distinction that will be lost on almost everybody) and at one point I had the title of baggage master. This position as baggage master was to be the furthest I got up the corporate ladder.

I like the city of London although it always has the power to infuriate anyone within its power. I like the mix of people and cultures. The opportunity to sit in a hotel canteen and have the chance to cross paths with any far distant part of the world. The chance to learn and by learning, connect.

In my time carrying bags I’ve come across a president, various sorts of royalty, rock stars, movie stars and a couple of media moguls. You can get a buzz out of these brief associations but to me they were always tempered by visits to the canteen where I came across people living in one of the most expensive cities in the world working for minimum wages or less.

I remember a time when two guys from Thailand were taken on as luggage porters. The general consensus was that they would be a bad addition to the team. They wouldn’t fit in, wouldn’t work hard and wouldn’t be good earners. All of these concerns proved to be untrue as they fitted in well, worked hard and earned well. Contact and engagement with people from different backgrounds has a way on knocking off the edges of prejudices we all have. And meeting those guys had more of an impact on me than meeting the rich and famous people that came in through the front door.

The book started with Jonny and it started many times without taking seed. I realise what the problem was now and it was the same problem that hampered my first novel. I was looking down on this character like he was a chess piece on a board. I knew what moves he could make and could see where I wanted him to go but wasn’t really inside him, I didn’t get him.

The book started when I decided to get inside Jonny, to take on his feeling and approach to life. He’s an amalgam of a few different characters but he’s real to me as one person. I know what he thinks even when I don’t like what he thinks. I know people like him, not many, and I have a good idea how they think and act. But ‘getting him’, who he is, was the opening of a door to the rest of the novel.

It’s a long book but I intend for it to have a sequel and at some point be a trilogy. I’m well into the writing of the sequel and it’s slowly taking shape. I hope you enjoy reading the book and I hope it provides a trigger to take an interest in some of the issues raised in the book.

Always have a book ‘on the go’ and always have another book waiting to take its place!