Born in Airdrie, Scotland, author Colin Curtis states that he’s lived by his wits most if not all of the time. His wits, a desire to write, and a vividly realistic story-telling style became the impetus for his role as novelist and poet.

Mr. Curtis gathered life’s knowledge in seemingly disconnected roles that collectively added to the richness of his experience and his ability as an author to describe real world events -- some otherwise unimaginable. In one colourful role, Colin Curtis served as a member of the 1st Battalion Scots Guards, during which time he performed public duties at Buckingham Palace, St. James’s Palace, Windsor Castle, and the Tower of London. At some time between these stints, he was injured and hospitalized as a victim of an I.R.A. bomb blast at 219 Springfield Road in Belfast.

He served in the British Merchant Marine with the Hull fishing trawlers. He survived on dry toast and orange cordials during three months at sea without sea legs in the North Atlantic on the trawler Kingston Topaz. He jumped ship upon docking for resupply at Akureyri, North Iceland and fled to the hills with a large bath towel for a blanket and two large tins of baked beans from the galley - AND NO BLOODY TIN OPENER!   

He worked eighteen months on an oil rig in the Bay of Bengal before sacked for smuggling a bottle of Old Smuggler whisky on board. Six months after his return to the United Kingdom, he joined the Royal Air Force Regiment and served for two and a half years in Belize, Central America before his return to the UK to take up membership in The Queens Colour Squad. There, he learned to perform three hundred movements with a single word of command.  After eighteen months, he received a medical discharge due to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, a condition that had worsened over time and as a result of the bombing incident and many close calls like it during three tours of duty in Northern Ireland.

The knockdown effect of successive traumatic experiences and subsequent illness was his inability to successfully readapt to civilian life. Colin Curtis took to the open road and for three years lived as a wanderer drifting the length and breadth of Scotland and England, sustaining himself with menial jobs as a tank cleaner, dish washer, used car salesman, road sweeper, barman, window cleaner, and a man-with-a-metal-spike to remove stones from the hooves of horses.
In 1987, Mr. Curtis married and became a step-father to his wife’s daughter. A year later, a beautiful daughter was born. Mr. Curtis writes, “….I felt at last I had achieved my one real aim in life, to be the husband and father of a lovely family.”

Sadly, the ghosts of his past haunt him from time to time...his present is ever in a state of upheaval...but there is stability and honesty in his expressive writing that provides a solid, professional outlook for his creative intellect and future personal achievement as an author.

Mr. Curtis describes himself as a fair man, one to do the right thing for those around him, and a pillar of dependability and friendship for whatever segment of society he’s representing.