A Bit About Greg
It was a seventy-five degree mid-summer’s Sunday afternoon in New York city. That was the first sentence of the first book I wrote. The story was about a bunch of New York gangsters who robbed the biggest diamond in the world, only for them to get arrested and thrown into the back of a police car. One of them stuffed the rock down the back of the cop car’s back seat and when they were released they had to go and steal every police car in New York until they found it again. I was 12 years old and it was great fun. I remember the rhythm of the sentence, the way my fingers had to move across the keyboard to write it, the action of the keyboard as keys were pressed. I remember the feeling of complete freedom to write any story I wanted to write, perplexed by the fact that the story seemed to be there at all, and chuffed when I’d written a novel-length story all of my own. It seemed as if anything was possible. And in story, of course, it is.
Out there in the real world though, things were different. In fact it often seemed the opposite; as if nothing were possible. Nothing except the same dreary old routine. But letting go of a routine can be scary. There are no maps, no way of knowing whether you’re doing the right thing, travelling in the right direction. But then you realise there is no right direction, just the one you have chosen to travel in. When you let go and let direction take you where it may, it will likely not be where you expected it would take you. Which is how I like to write. I think if I knew where my stories were heading, my readers would also know where they were heading, which wouldn’t be very exciting; the novelty of the novel would be lost. I hope you enjoy the difference.
But this is a biography, so: I live in the UK with my wife and daughter. Please do reach out on facebook or other social media platforms I might be on, I really would appreciate your reach.
Greg Candelaria 