I’ve always had a thing for hats – literal or metaphorical.

I’ve never had a short answer to the question, “So, what do you do?”

Even my tagline has three different occupations – writer, storyteller, ventriloquist.  But it’s not that simple, because I’m not the sort of writer that sits down and writes a novel.  My current to-do list is urging me to complete five different writing tasks for various clients and purposes, and that’s before you count the writing I do towards my own performances, or consider the writing I might do to use in an assembly or family service as children’s worker.  It’s also before you count the times that I do attempt to write a novel, or a resource book, or a poem.

Nor am I a storyteller with a single repertoire.  Although a large amount of my telling is biblical, and that is reflected in the books I’ve published so far, my work with schools tends to be traditional tales and my most recent storytelling project was local history.

As a ventriloquist, things are a bit more straightforward, but even there I have three distinct voices and characters apart from my own.  Evidence that I’m making a career out of splitting myself into as many parts as possible.

So I tend to answer that “What do you do?” question by saying that I juggle hats.  Or that I wear too many of them.

This new site and blog is an attempt to stack some hats together.  In fact, I nearly gave it ‘Hatstacking’ as a title, but then I reflected that it would be likely to get no visitors apart from a handful of confused milliners.

I don’t know whether it will work, or even last (I don’t have a great track record with new blogs) but I hope you will stick around and find out with me.  I do have some ideas and even a vague sort of a thing which could be called a plan if you really pummel it into shape.  So, wait and see?