Against the Odds

Originally from Bournemouth, Gavin L. Hill now lives just south of Gothenburg, on the west coast of Sweden. The Product of a dysfunctional family, he found himself in foster care at the tender age of three. It was soon after that he became ill. So ill in fact that it was pretty much assumed he was going to die. The doctors were unable to give a clear diagnose, although he temporarily went blind and became paralyzed down the left-hand side. He began school long after his fellow students and as they rushed headlong into basic education, he found myself falling by the wayside. At fifteen years of age he was not only living on the streets, but was totally illiterate.

    It wasn’t long before he was getting into serious trouble and it was then that he decided to make a new start. Had it not been for an almost divine intervention, he might not have made it to adulthood. The odds were stacked against him from the very word go. Life is about persevering though, about moving forward against the stream and about surviving in a world that can sometimes be very cruel.

Gavin’s childhood was lonely and confusing. He didn’t fit in anywhere and didn’t feel important to anybody. If he had nothing else though, he had a great imagination. A lack of friends in the real world caused him to create his own friends. He created heroes and villains, blood-thirsty monsters and fire-breathing dragons, witches and wizards and magic potions. It was a world that he was in control of and a world that became a part of his everyday life.

Like an angel, a young man passed him by one day, asked him to write a poem, told him he knew he could. It didn’t matter him that Gavin could neither read nor write. He had already made up his mind and Gavin found himself writing a poem for the very first time. It’s a fact that we are all products of society, only wandering as far as the chains of our social and educational order will allow us. Gavin was brought up believing he was stupid and stupid pretty much is as stupid does.

Granted, the only person capable of reading Gavin’s poem was Gavin himself. Together they translated his words into audible English and by the time they were done, Gavin knew his life would never be the same again. This young man pushed him to write more, urged him to learn to read and to write, encouraged him and told him that he certainly wasn’t stupid.

Gavin’s break from his criminal background was without a doubt the most decisive decision he ever made. It was the best decision he have ever made as well. He taught himself to read and write by reading the Yellow Pages and studying an old Oxford dictionary. And soon after that, he decided to write a book.

Back in 1989 Gavin moved to Sweden and started over. He began working with special needs children, knowing that they were reflections of himself. At the same time, he was writing, producing; putting the world he had created as a child onto paper. Then in 1992, he met a man who gave him an old computer. Everything he had written on paper was now being written and saved. Most words had a red line under them, although Gavin soon realized that he only made a certain spelling mistake just once. Then it was only a matter of getting rid of the green lines.

Originally the ‘Maze’ was only seventy pages long and it was based entirely in England, although living now in Sweden, he made some dire changes to the manuscript. The compelling tale of an English teenager and a beautiful Swedish girl, who unwittingly find a house with a magical and somewhat frightening world within its degenerated walls, Gavin brings them into the Maze. The very future of Planet Earth rests in the balance of illusion verses reality, the forces of good and evil are at war again and only a young girl named Johanna can save mankind before it’s too late. She wants nothing more though than to live a normal life with her beloved Danny, to go to school and to party a little, as teenagers do. She doesn’t want to know about the house of horrors, or its dark and foreboding secret, she doesn’t want to meet Hazzari or to inherit his powers. She doesn’t want to enter the Maze and she doesn’t want to lose herself within its deceptive corridors. But what Johanna wants is not the plans laid for her. What she gets is the power of Hazzari and the key to the dark side of the Maze.

From seventy pages, the Maze swelled to almost three hundred pages and once the book was complete, Gavin began writing another. The Blood Tree complete, he started The Changling. There had been many changes in his personal life as well. He had met a girl, fallen in love, had become a father. He was now working fulltime, writing fulltime and spending as much time with his son as he possibly could.

In 1998, Gavin began writing song texts together with another young man, who would in time become a music teacher. Gavin had written a children’s story and they thought it would be fun to put music to it. Together, they did much more than that. The manuscript was turned into a theater production and Gavin took it on the road. It was an amazing success and one year later, a second theatre manuscript, complete with songs was written.

Unfortunately, Gavin and the mother of his son parted company in 2000. She was quite happy to give up her son and he was only too happy to become a single father. It was a struggle, but still he managed to keep the dream alive. He began The Watchman that year and went on to write The Power of the Zycon and The Tale of the Golden Casket. Seven years later Gavin’s son began spending every other week with his mother. He still does.

It was back in 2009, while Gavin was at a teachers meeting that he fell into a rather interesting conversation with a soon-to-retire teacher. She had at one time been a translator and now so close to retirement, she contemplated whether she might not like to get back into translating again. As if the word of God had suddenly left his lips, Gavin found himself talking about his books. They didn’t even know he wrote books. He had never been brave enough to tell anybody until now. She smiled back and agreed to take a look at The Maze.

Two weeks later she arrived at work, meeting Gavin in the teachers’ lounge. She was close to tears. No, Gavin wasn’t stupid after all. Nobody is stupid. We are all products of our environment and we all possess the power to change the world and our lives forever. She suggested Gavin send it off to a publisher. He pretty much took it with a pinch of salt, searched and sent off to a publisher in Florida. Within a month, a deal was signed.

In 2010, The Blood Tree was released, followed by The Changling in 2011 and the Watchman in 2012. The Power of the Zycon came out in 2014 and The Tale of the Golden Casket is set for release in 2016. His first children’s book is with his publisher as we speak and the audio story of that book (William Gray & the Family Next Door) has even been sent to the Whitehouse. William Gray & the Family Next Door confronts the issues of both bullying and racism, the reader being taken into the world of two mice families. Just last year President Obama sent a thank you note to Gavin and his best friend and PA, Rosie Hartwig for their anti-bullying and anti-racism work in America.

Gavin also works as a motivational speaker, talking about his life and the fact that nobody is ever stupid. And nobody is ever stupid, everybody has a potential and nobody has the right to call anybody stupid. Life is an amazing gift, an intricate kaleidoscope of dazzling imagery. Nothing is purely black and white. You only have to look out of your window to see that.

You can connect with Gavin at the following sites:

https://www.facebook.com/gavinhillauthor

https://www.facebook.com/groups/466994465581/

http://www.amazon.com/Gavin-Hill/e/B0039ST8SU

http://sweetconclusions.areavoices.com/2015/03/05/the-bus-stop-of-humanity/