Taking stock, looking back and scrutinising our choices in life - Angmering author

The result for June, aged 75, who writes as Clement Russell, is Get on the Train (Olympia Publishers, £9.99, available from Amazon etc)

“We, all of us, usually settle for a way of life. That doesn’t mean it is unhappy or unfulfilled. It just doesn’t always meet the idyll that we dream or fantasise about. To some degree or another, we all slip into a what if world now and again.

“Get on the Train is about the unimaginable becoming real. The fantasy becoming a reality. That, to me, is a magical thing. It very rarely happens but I thought I could write about it happening. Bring a bit of magic to the page maybe.

“I love music – all music – and the book has a strong theme about music running through it. I think we are all fascinated by those who can create music, write it, perform it. The main protagonist has all this in shedloads.

“I also like to laugh. It has been a mainstay of my upbringing (Glaswegian mother and Royal Marine father) and my own family life. I think young children sit at the feet of raconteurs and naturally funny people and learn to laugh, to make others laugh and know how wonderful that feeling is.

“I was so lucky, growing up, to hear houses rock with laughter. I love to hear my teenage granddaughters’ quick wit, see how they don’t mind making a fool of themselves or hear us all roar with laughter and I’m happy. They’ve got it for life. Not sure that I want them to inherit the bad language that was normalised for me at an early age and that so often accentuates humour but we all know when and where to contain our mischievousness!

“Hopefully, Get on the Train can make readers laugh in parts. It made me laugh writing

“From a child, I have always written and loved the spoken and written word.

“This book has always been in my mind but time demands dictated when I actually started to write it.

“In my late thirties, I studied for a BA in education and a tutor became something of a mentor to me. After submitting several pieces of work, he asked to speak to me. He said that I was supposed to be writing an academic essay, not a novel. He said my written work and style needed to be pared down, reigned in and disciplined. He said that he didn’t want drama, pathos, innuendo or humour – and that he had actually laughed out loud at some parts. Crestfallen and embarrassed. I listened as he went on to say that it was alright, that he could teach me to produce academic writing but that I already knew how to write a novel. He suggested I did that at the first opportunity. It was only after coming to the end of my career that I had that opportunity. My inspiration, I think, comes from great love stories, old and new. I join millions of others when I succumb to the intensity of deep and extreme emotion of this kind.”