This story is pretty personal to me, so I’m absolutely delighted to find that others have enjoyed it enough to place it in the top 50 of the 2017 Launch Pad Contest.

No I’m not a teenage girl and, no, I don’t play the violin, or any other musical instrument, for that matter – not well, at least – but I was hit by the same life-altering condition as Penelope, and because of it I, too, was forced to give up something very important to me...

For as long as I can remember I have wanted to become a teacher, but it took until I was in my thirties to feel ready to take the plunge. I started working as a teaching assistant while, at the same time, going to university to get the necessary degree. Having done all the hard work, I was just months from starting teacher training, when the condition struck without warning.

I won’t bore you with the details, but after years of uncertainty and testing my nemesis was given a name. Fibromyalgia, the doctors called it, a condition few understood – and for which there is no known cause or cure – which led to early-onset arthritis in most of my major joints.

Piece by piece this condition took away the things I enjoyed – horse-riding, archery, tae kwon do, rock-climbing, cycling, swimming – and within a few short years I went from an extremely active individual with two jobs that I loved, to a housebound ball of pain who had to quit his career and go back to working part-time in a supermarket, just to make ends meet.

As a way of coping with what my life had become, I turned my attentions inward and started working on my other great passion in life, writing; using it as a means to escape into better worlds and happier lives than my own.

My condition continued to evolve and change, however, and for a while I thought even writing would be snatched from me as the arthritis finally hit my hands, meaning that typing for more than a few minutes felt a little like slamming my hands repeatedly in a door.

Writing, however, had become my lifeline and I refused to let go. So I found and mastered dictation software, and with it I “wrote” Where Words Fail, as a way of proving to myself that my dreams weren’t over; and to help me talk about a condition I was trying to suffer through in silence.

While set in a fictional world with fictional characters, Penelope has gone through a lot of the same problems I’ve experienced, and she’s trying to work through her illness to find a place for herself. And in my mind, as I wrote, I hoped this story would prove comforting to anyone going through a similar upset in their lives; and also to help educate people on this misunderstood condition.

Which is not to say the story is preachy, or depressing, quite the opposite. I think my condition has made me realise that the real world can already be an unfair and often cruel place, and that I don’t want those things in my fiction, too.

I want fun and excitement and adventure, even from everyday life; I want to enjoy reading a story that takes me away from the pain and the loss; I want to read about people doing their best in a bad situation, facing their problems with resolve and a sense of humour; people that come out the other end, changed for the better, having learned what’s important to them.

If you like those things in you entertainment, too, I hope you enjoy reading my story.