Welcome to the official website of the non-professional author Paul Rossi.

Paul's interest in creative writing started all the way back at Dale Primary School in Normanton, Derby, when his (possibly hungover) teacher asked the class to write "...something about an animal...", then put her head in her hands and sobbed for an hour (ok, that bit probably didn't happen). Paul had recently read the latest edition of The Beano comic, where Dennis the Menace's dog, Gnasher, had disguised himself as a greyhound in order to enter the prestigious Greyhound Derby and win the prize money, so, now considering himself now somewhat of an expert on greyhounds, Paul decided he would write a poem about one...

"I can't remember all of it, Paul later said in an interview, it started something like - "I'm the only fast furious greyhound racer, the only one with the nickname the pacer. My trainers name is Speedy Mick, if you wanna race me you gotta be very quick! To amuse myself I race a train, but my fun is spoiled when it starts to rain" - it goes on for a bit longer, but that's the gist of it. Yeah, yeah, I know it's not great, but I was, like, eight years old or summat, gimme a break".

As the teacher called each of the children up one by one for her to review their work, she stopped when she read Paul's poem. "Where'd you get this from?" she asked suspiciously. "I made it up", he shrugged. Teacher raised an eyebrow, her accusations of primary school plagiarism displayed a shocking lack of faith in either the boys natural ability or, more tellingly, her own inspirational teaching. She wasn't like Robin Williams in Dead Poets Society (although some children in the class would regularly stand on their chairs in defiance). Anyway, an awareness that he might have a bit of a knack for 'words' was at that moment raised in young Paul.

Fast forward some forty years later, Paul has self published two novels, and plans to do more...