Graham Bruce Shipman
Writer of Fiction
Graham was born in Stirling, Scotland in the early '60s.
He was brought up with the writings of Beatrix Potter, Lewis Carroll, Edward Lear, Robert Louis Stevenson and JRR Tolkien, all instilling in him a love of vocabulary, rhyme and rhythm, creativity and imagination. With no access to television, he appreciated books and their ability to transport him to magical lands.
Books soon became the escape from days at an abusive public school, returning to a broken home in the dark wet Scottish evenings.
Throughout his school years, his ardour for reading was further reinforced by the diverse texts he was introduced to leading up to English Language and Literature O-Levels. At around that time, girls were introduced to his school and this led to his first proper forays into creative writing. Romantic poetry of course! With a growing appreciation for female company, he switched from Geography to English to study to A-Level along with his other favorite subjects, Maths and Physics.
In his early twenties, Graham started writing songs and prose in his spare time, always deepening his love of the English language and the creativity and art that its structure and genealogy encouraged. After working in a variety of jobs, Graham was lucky enough to find his vocation in an environment that allowed him to share his enthusiasm for the English language. Teaching English as a Foreign Language to university students in Athens, Greece, he was able to instil his appreciation for the language into his students. In the meantime he continued to develop his art through writing song and prose.
Having moved from teaching to managing a team developing language learning software, he was able to hone more critical skills required for writing. In this role, he became chief proof reader and editor for large volumes of materials, while at the same time leading the software development team. His current body of professional work can be seen in the Portfolio section at http://www.jonmoat.online/.
In 2005, Graham completed an MEd in Technology Enhanced Learning from Stirling University. Writing and researching his dissertation developed further discipline in him that would be essential in the process of writing more substantial works. With his children growing fast, Graham found little time for creative writing over the next few years. However, in 2016, after his marriage had broke down, writing at weekends over a nine month period, he completed the first draft of his novel, "Somewhere Inside", a romantic thriller.
Meanwhile work took an interesting turn when developing an online course for a university, he was given the opportunity to spend two months in China teaching, which in turn lead to a job as Senior Lecturer in English for Academic Purposes just as the pandemic hit and the demand for online courses and resources went through the roof.
The novel was ready but his next step was entering competitions while trying to find an agent before forging ahead writing the next two books in the series, "Coming Out" and "All Over". Neither ventures were successful and so self-publishing was the next step. And here we are.
Graham currently lives in a market town in the North East of England and would love to be able to make enough to write full time.
