105 Steps is a memoir of not just the time your wife was in the hospital, but of your journey together in life, with all the ups and downs it took you on. Why was this an important book for you to write?

It’s often said that just before you die, your whole life flashes before your eyes. With my wife on life support in ICU, I knew regardless of the outcome, my life would also never be the same. As a songwriter, words and tunes have always been my chosen outlet, however sitting bedside and faced with losing my wife, I felt compelled to remember and relate every moment we shared together. The recollections, dates and experiences constituting the fabric of our lives together seemed to write themselves and, at times, I felt like it wasn’t me actually writing, I just painted the picture, immersed in and reliving each moment of our 51 year relationship. The journey we were on was too big for a song so 105 Steps was born and written in 6 weeks (on my iPhone), because I couldn’t bear to lose one single valuable memory.

I appreciated the candid nature with which you told your story. What was the hardest thing for you to write about?

I tried to be as honest as I could. My fear and vulnerability was exposed in the front pages when I wrote;

“Imagine yourself standing before a wide, deep, dark river. It’s night time but, for some unknown reason, you know you must cross the river. You are alone and afraid. A large, white stepping stone slowly rises from the deep and you step out. It’s firm and solid. Another white stepping stone appears in front of you. It too, is firm and solid. You take it. Then another, and another and another. The river is wide but your path is now long. You turn around to see how far you’ve come. There are no stones. There is only one stone, the one you are standing on”.

Readers familiar with ICU and long hospital stays will understand the metaphor of the river and the stones. After my fear had been exposed and, with nothing to hide, the words flowed freely. That one paragraph (above), was difficult to write, but established the parameters for the rest of the book. Emotionally, the time of most anguish and mental trauma was when we were, as a family, called into a meeting with Doctors, expecting we would have to make a decision on whether my wife might live or die.

What is one piece of advice someone gave you that changed your life?

“Never lose your childhood innocence”

… always a font for bravado and courage, often a call to not be afraid to “step up to the plate”. Told to me by Carlos Santana, but (loosely) a famous quote by Federico Fellini

After knocking on various doors (no particular person but thru books, meditation) … I came to understand that Space, Time, Energy and Matter are all manifestations of the same thing. This realisation freed my mind and opened up a lifetime source of creative positive energy and thinking. I could believe in and mould my own future.

What do you hope is one thing readers take away from your story?

There is always hope, and Love is the solution. We only have control over our own thoughts but, with that, comes great power. Power to only hold positive thoughts, positive images, positive outcomes. Power to refuse to entertain negativity. The human brain will manifest whatever is held within it and doesn’t differentiate between good and bad. No matter the adversity, readers can create their own future, readers can mould and manifest their outcomes. No matter how bad things appear, a positive outcome can always be had if readers nurture their thoughts in a sea of love and have faith.

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