Here he is, author of the Jarrod Black series…
It all began with a magazine idea back at school. This was pre-internet. The idea was for a Newcastle United fanzine called “We’re Away To…” which would have twenty plus editions a season, one for every away game.
So, that never got going, although I’m sure my twelve-year-old self would have no idea just how much the internet would change the way journalists and readers produce and consume news.
After a glittering career as first team football journalist and centre-half for Stafford University’s double-winners in 1995, pumping out entertaining match reports to a keen audience, the appetite for writing was set. It would be a few years and many thousand kilometres, settling in Sydney and rekindling a football career in the suburbs, until there would be more.
The ball started rolling. Match reports for junior and senior games were published. Fact and fiction would be blurred. The mantle of newsletter editor was offered for the legendary In Off The Post magazine at West Ryde Rovers and this teed up the first foray into Football Fiction. Introducing Jarrod Black hit the internet as a self-published rough diamond, gaining as many accolades as possible in its small sphere of friends, family and club colleagues.
With the arrival of Fair Play Publishing, with its imprint Popcorn Press, onto the scene, this was a marriage made in heaven. Following a lengthy period of editing the original work and completing a second Unashamed Football Novel – Hospital Pass – the inaugural Football Writers Festival at Jamberoo brought the two books to an unsuspecting general public. A quickfire double.
It has now been over six months since the first works of Texi Smith were published. This is where the blog starts. Where to next…?