I’ve been drawing for as long as I can remember. According to my parents by the time I was three they’d leave me alone for hours with a load of pencils and paper and let me get on with it.

When I was 12 my dad found me reading an issue of Batman and gave me Art Spiegelman’s Maus, which for the first time made me want to be a comics writer as opposed to just creator of comics. If you haven’t read Maus, you should.

When I was 16 I moved to the UK for my A-levels with an art scholarship. I went to a boarding school. I didn’t fit in. Aside from a few good friends and some great teachers, I hated it. Apart from the art instruction I received there, I’m self-taught.

I’m essentially to be found hunched over a keyboard or drawing board, doing art, usually in the company of my wife and fellow artist Anna. Sometimes there’s a cat in my lap.

Aside from comics, I also write poetry and, occasionally, words for operas. (See ‘stories‘ for more on my various projects.)

In 2011 two of my scripts were amongst the ten finalists in the Minioperas competition run by English National Opera. These scripts are now in the public domain and can be used by anyone.

In 2015 I received two prizes in the Ware Open Poetry Competition, taking second prize overall and sharing the sonnet prize.

We used to live in the basement of a converted Georgian house in Bristol. It was cold, damp and dark. The only saving grace about the place was the garden, to which we’d escape when the weather permitted.

The garden was lovely. Our bedroom let out onto a lawn which blended into wanton overgrowth at the furthest end. A fox had its den somewhere in the tangled gardens beyond; one night I woke to see two fox cubs playing just outside our door.

Anyway, the effect of this was that I actually found myself writing out our address differently through the year. Basement flat, garden flat – winter, summer. I’m guessing the rest’s obvious.