I was born in Auckland, New Zealand, on a sunny Saturday, early December, to an English mother and Kiwi father. From an early age, I loved books – a wide variety of reading, but with a particular fondness for science fiction/fantasy.
Throughout my formative years, I held something close to my heart – a burning desire to write – fueled by various comments and accomplishments in English and one special competition win at the age of nine. However, the specter of an antiquated belief that a son must follow his father’s vocation, coupled with some extraordinarily bad advice, influenced a naïve adolescent into unfulfilling jobs.
Eventually, I left the shores of my home-country and ventured out into the world, to the birthplace of my beloved mother, England. It was there that life really took off – meeting many an amazing person and experiencing many a wonderful thing on my travels around the globe. Yet still, I pushed away my true yearning, thinking that the opportunity to write was lost, even with all the great ideas that leapt into my mind, urging me to expand upon their fledgling concept. Write about me, they would say!
After moving to Australia, I reconnected with a special person who has given me the second thing I thought I would never have – two beautiful children. A special person who has been my light, my beacon, through the darkest of hours. Inevitably, bleak days lay ahead, with the same old rut rearing its extremely ugly head. But Karma, in all its infinite wisdom and consequences, had a plan, and on a night in November 2009, wrapped in despair, that plan slammed into my mind with the force of a Rocky Balboa roundhouse.
Write, Liam Taylor. Write.
And so my journey starts, with a thought that began on a delayed train outside London in 2002 and just kept growing. Now, The Shard Chronicles is well underway, and I'm an awfully busy man, juggling my family life and my true career. I'm loving every minute of it!