World citizen – born and brought up in Wales of Italian parents, married to a German and with two children, the first born in Chad, Africa and the second in England.

I’ve lived and worked in a number of other countries, and extra-cultural experiences often play a major role in my writings. I am currently living in France where I teach English to business people. When we moved to Dole in 2003, I joined a writing group. I wanted to get to know other people and it sounded a fun thing to do. Been writing ever since. This is my first publication.

Paul currently calls Dole, France home.

Discovery – The Red Book, 2010

Soon to be written - The Yang Book, 2010

Writers Notebook

Coming soon

My first reaction when I was asked to contribute to Chinese Whisperings was one of joy. Every writer wants to be read and this is my first real chance to gain a wider readership. I liked the format and the challenge it presented to come up with a story using someone else’s character. But as my writing slot grew nearer, anxiety came creeping round the corner. Was my story going to be up to scratch? Would there be a character I could latch on to and tell his/her story? I’m afraid I probably hassled Annie quite a bit in a bid to find out, what character I could use before she’d finished. Working to a very short deadline was also new for me. At one time I was having such serious doubts as to whether I would make it, I fleetingly considered an online disappearing act.

Perhaps the most interesting part of the experience came later. Normally, when you finish a story, that’s the end of it. Not so here. Seeing one of my characters come alive in a different story and a different way was both interesting and a challenge in that it meant fine-tuning my own story to accommodate both visions

There’s nothing like getting thrown into a new culture for discovering who you really are. All that is familiar is taken from you and you have to learn to think and live in a different way. You begin to question yourself, your upbringing, your values… indeed, everything you’ve lived for. That’s what I wanted to explore in this story which draws to a large extent on personal experiences, having lived and worked for ten years in Chad, Central Africa.

Elizabeth became the ideal character to explore this question. Outwardly, a self-assured, confident business woman, she suddenly finds herself with realities she doesn’t like. When she once again meets – one could almost say is confronted by – an old college friend with whom she now seems to be on a collision course, she begins to doubt.

Making Elizabeth’s confrontation with the new culture a short one is deliberate. She’s thrown in at the deep end and is intensely aware of all that is going on around her. It’s only in the early days of cultural immersion that this is really possible. At the same time it provides her with an escape route. She can always turn her back on what she sees and is beginning to feel, return home and again take up her life where she left off. In the end she does make a choice, but this decision is just the first step on the road she has yet to explore.

The story also calls into question one of the Western world’s cherished idols. We take it for granted that successful businesses and economic growth are commendable. Giving the story a Third World setting enables me to show up this fallacy and enable the reader to ask if things are so different wherever he/she lives.