All Afloat: A Chronicle of Craft and Waterways

William Wood has led a nomadic life and his friends and relatives are far flung. He now lives and writes in Sussex where he is a full time carer for his 91-year-old parents. When he can get away he likes visiting his children in France, Rutland and Cumbria, or his in-laws in Norway and Slovakia. The diaries he keeps on these visits occasionally give him local colour and ideas for his stories. If he ever makes money from his writing he intends visiting old haunts in Africa, India and Australia – or even pastures new. For the moment, every caged day is both an adventure and incredibly frustrating.

In addition to his Little Book of Pleasures, William writes journalistic articles. He has had stories on the BBC World Service, and contributed to a variety of magazines and anthologies. He has also always written poems; they are, he says, “something that has to be squeezed out like a boil to give me relief”. At university William wrote and directed his own plays, and later worked with amateur groups in Norway. Most often he writes short stories and novels; his first remains unpublished (as, he says, all first novels should be). His first published book was No Time (Babash/Ryan, 2003). Set in South Sudan, it predicted the independence of the south nearly two decades in advance. His next novel, Passing Wind, was shortlisted for an Amazon prize.