Facts About Me

As I said in my last post, here's some juicy details about me as we wait for my new computer.


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First off, I'm a 22 year old Scottish dude. Pretty basic and common knowledge, huh?

I grew up in your ordinary everyday village which had a population of less than 3,000 people. Small place, I know.

I used to absolutely hate reading and English as a whole. It just never really jivved well with me when I was a kid.

I was your average weird kid in primary school who only had a handful of friends, but that changed when I entered high school.

I grew to be quite tall and I was well-built since living in a rural village and not having the internet until I was 14 led to a lot of outdoor exercise as I played with friends.

Thus, I ended up becoming a bit of a dick to people since it got laughs from my 'friends' and made me look tough.

I guess I had the mentality of 'so long as I'm the bully, I won't get bullied'. Meaningless now that I reflect on it. I'm not in contact with anyone I hung out with back then anymore.

I was still an awkward weirdo who occasionally played magic the gathering or hung out with the 'losers', so I guess I was kinda true to myself.

Anyhoo, when I was 15 and just starting my 4th year of highschool, my mum drove off in the middle of the night to go move in with her new man (now my stepdad), without so much as a goodbye.

This broke my dad and heavily impacted my family as a whole.

My dad didn't care about raising me nor my two elder brothers beyond feeding us, so I decided to stop going to school and take up the profession of a hermit Xbox player.

After 2 months of that, I got a phone call from my school guidance teacher.

The conversation went a bit like this: 'You don't want to be here, we don't want you here. Go on this special programme until you're 16, then I'll kick you out of school legally. Sound good to you?' 'Sounds great.'

And so I did. I got given money for bus passes into the city where I went to this future goals programme twice a week for an hour each time.

At that point in my life, I kinda wanted to be a psychiatrist, so I went on to college to study health and social care as an entry into that kind of work.

Remember, at that time and even to this day, I only had/have the qualifications of a semi-competent 15yo.

Well, that ended when after 3 months of study, I had to do a 3 month work-experience at a care home that was about a 4 mile walk away from the bus station.

I wasn't passionate enough to do that, so I quit and decided to just do nothing at home for a year.

I could only afford to do this because I was under 17, and thus got benefits from the council allowing me to pay for rent without actually having to look for a job.

As far as rent went, I was still living in the family home at that point which was owned by my grandmother by law. She had numerous mental disabilities, so my grandad managed it and let me live there without paying rent.

To explain why I was there alone, my dad moved out shortly after my mum did to go live with his new girlfriend (my now stepmum).

After that, the oldest brother that I was living with moved out to a flat with his girlfriend since she was expecting a child soon.

My next and last brother living there moved out for god knows what reason. He's one step shy of being a drug-addict, so I won't even try to think of why he left me there by myself.

Anyway, when that brother moved out, I still wasn't quite on any benefits at that moment, and the house had no electricity nor food, so I was up shit creek without a paddle.

I needed money, and I only had 2 options in my mind; ask a childhood friend for some, or ask a stranger who I know my brothers have fucked over before.

Well, of course, my pride forced me to choose the second option.

Luckily, the stranger in question was a lovely woman willing to give me a chance despite both of my closest brothers screwing her daughter over as well as stealing from her.

I'm still good friends with this person despite her being twice my age.

So, the next year rolled on by without much incident. I got into anime quite a bit. I'd spend entire days doing nothing but watching One Piece or Naruto.

Now, as sad as this sounds, it was a very important milestone towards me becoming an author.

Funnily enough, I only got into anime after watching My Little Pony since a girl I liked was into that as well as Durarara!. I ended up dating three of her friends and not her, but hey, the world works in mysterious ways.

While I was still doing that, eventually my time on benefits was coming to an end.

I was on something called job seekers allowance, which you can only get for 6 months before it gets cut off. I had avoided this once with a work experience at an electrical appliance store called Curry's, but this time, I got a real job instead.

I got a 6 month contract at an electric company called SSE. I fucking hated it. It was all admin work with obscene deadlines and goals.

I ended up finding out that too much stress results in me getting nosebleeds from that job, funnily enough.

At the same time as that, I had met my first serious girlfriend over Facebook, yes, I know, pathetic.

We'd had Skype calls and whatnot, so I knew it wasn't a catfish attempt.

Just as I quit my job at SSE, I got my passport and flew to Germany to visit my girlfriend for the first time of many.

As it would so happen, the manager in charge of me at SSE fucked up and still payed me for my last month of work as well as overpaid me an extra month's pay. Since it was his mistake, I got to keep the money.

The next major event in my life would be my grandmother dying, resulting in my mum inheriting the house I was living in.

A few months ticked on by before I was told that I needed to move out.

As it so happened, my aunt and uncles had inherited £75,000 when my grandma died, but my mum only got the house I was living in.

She decided to sell it without warning me.

Thankfully, my good brother found a place for me to move out to. I had no job nor income, but I did have a £2,000 trust fund from my grandad after turning 18.

My new landlord was very kind. He believed me when I said I would get back on benefits and get housing benefits too to pay for rent. He even forgave me for vomiting all over the stairs when I first arrived. First time moving nerves is what we chalked that up to.

As a result of moving out, my broadband contract got cancelled, leaving me with a debt to pay off. That had me feeling quite bitter.

Anyway, another year passed and I was now working as a gardener in a charity garden shop that worked to help the disabled or vulnerable find work. That was nice, but I ended up getting fired abruptly one day by the regional manager himself which kinda sucked.

At this point, I was heavily into gaming and not so much into anime, but it always lingered in the back of my mind.

Another year passed and I was now a binman. This job was very fun, if not very physically demanding.

I'd run about 5-10 miles a day and load up 100-500 wheelie bins to the truck 4 days a week.

Halfway through this job, I found out that my girlfriend had some serious mental health issues that she had chosen not to share with me. She ended up breaking up with me, which crushed me a bit.

I got back into anime, then manga when anime wasn't enough, and then light novels, then Royalroad.

It was at that point that I started writing on my Xbox One.

The first 50 chapters of Lone: The Wanderer (formerly The Lone Wanderer) were written on that Xbox.

My good brother worked at the same place as me, but at the skip site instead of on a truck like me, so he offered to take a PC for me from the charity storage crate (nothing ever actually went to charity. It was all pocketed by a private company who sold everything off. Yay corruption).

The PC he gave me was the one that I used for almost 2 years. It only broke recently.

Well, near the end of my contract, I was moved to the skip site that my brother worked at. We had different shifts, so never actually worked together.

One day, I found a nearly perfect shovel and took it home. This inspired Shovels In Spades (formerly The Tale Of A Shovel Knight).

I didn't really like working at the skip site. It was boring. I started taking more sick days and eventually got fired. Being on a temp contract didn't really help with my motivation, so I hardly cared.

I went back on to benefits and lazed around as I wrote.

Eventually, the benefits were close to stopping, but I really didn't want a normal job again.

I told my work coach that I was earning about $300 from my writing and that I'd like to go self-employed, but I couldn't afford it yet.

I was luckily accepted onto a programme that helped people like me, but I had no housing benefits nor any support besides my writing for 2 months, which was not good.

Now, to confess something. Part of the reason I got my brother to get me a job as a binman was because I played Naruto Online and spent rent money on it.

I was addicted. Over the two years I'd played that, I'd sunk $10,000 into it. A ludicrous amount of money. Thank god I've quit, huh?

Anyway, playing that introduced me to some really close friends. One of which lent me enough money to pay rent for 2 months while I used my Patreon income to buy food.

Once I started getting my support for self-employment as well as my housing benefits, we were off to the races.

A year has passed and now we're here.


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I guess that's all I'll share for now. That was exhausting to type out on a phone.

I've shared pretty much all of this before publically on Royalroad's Discord server as well as my own, so don't think I'm being brave by opening up or anything.

There are some pretty interesting things regarding me as an author, but yeah, I'll save that for another day.