The Author in the old office.
The Author’s Working Life
David S Jamieson was born 16 March 1972 in Manchester, England. He spent only a year in Manchester however, before his father’s work forced a family move to Lancaster, where he would spend the next 15 years. Another family move when he was 16 meant that David settled in Basingstoke to complete his high school education before joining the Royal Air Force as a trainee Navigator, aged 18. In 1994 he was posted to Wessex helicopters on 60 Squadron, after which he was selected to train as a pilot and subsequently streamed to Fast Jets. After completing a tour as an instructor, in 2003 David went on to fly the Tornado F3 fighter on 25 Squadron before changing roles in 2008 and joining 100 Squadron flying the Hawk as one of the RAF’s adversary pilots…he was the bad guy! On joining 100 Squadron David started writing as a hobby. Almost immediately The Lost Cactus took over his life and for the next 4 years the Priest and the Shaman books evolved. In 2011 David completed a tour in Afghanistan and decided to leave the RAF. He is presently studying to become an airline pilot while continuing to write the books that give him so much pleasure.
The TLC Story
I began The Lost Cactus in the Autumn of 2008, a hobby to pass the coming winter’s cold, dark nights. It was an impulse one evening and after a few hours I’d completed around a page. After a few weeks a chapter had been completed with my deft single finger typing lagging way behind my thoughts. Six months dashed by before the original, terrible draft was finished. I then returned to the beginning of the story and read the awful, depressing start to the story. Vowing to change things, I put the opening to the back of my mind and steam rolled into the second book before continuing into the third. Halfway through the third I had the whole storyline fixed in my head and I began the editing. Wow, but how painful is editing! I don’t know exactly how many edits I completed, but somewhere between ten-twenty would not be unreasonable. After three years the book was ready and I self-published after dozens of rejections from Literary agents, with replies such as ‘we don’t do fantasy’ or ‘your character is too old for children’ and ‘they want vampires, not wizards’…I had to take the next step alone. I wanted to start a trend, not follow one.
david-jamieson.com 