It’s the standard question. Asked from day one in primary school. Who cares? I was intent on digging up the sand pit and impatient to know the intentions of the blond kid who had nicked my shovel, but the teacher seemed quite determined to know my destiny. It would continue as a question from then until the quicksands of high school. Other questions too. What do you enjoy? What do you want to be? What are you good at? As if those three were likely to coalesce together and reveal the nirvana of employment. As if.

Mostly, my mates shrugged in reply when they were asked. Some still shrugged when they turned thirty. The blond kid with the shovel was one of them. He was still searching, although, as a stop gap that had lasted half his life, he worked as a construction labourer. Should have known really.

Ah, but me, I was one of those annoyingly cock-sure kids. From age six, I wanted to join the Air Force. Possibly earlier, but I have written proof from age six, when we were asked to write our ‘life stories’ for English. It was, necessarily, a short volume, but on the last page it says, “I wont to be an Ayr Force Pilet.” I was six and there was no spell check. Give me a break.

Thing is, I went off the pilot idea quite quickly because I was more interested in fixing stuff than flying, so for aircrew, I substituted aircraft technician. With the certainty came impatience. I knew exactly what I wanted, but I still had to attend classes that weren’t relevant to me. I had to wait until I was old enough, wait until my exams came through, wait until the next intake date. Time seemed to drag, but eventually I joined up.

During my career, through a series of weird and wonderful coincidences, opportunities and blind luck, I ended up being commissioned as an Intelligence Officer. With not a dry martini nor an Aston Martin in sight, I decided after twenty years to depart for foreign shores. Australia and sunshine welcomed me.

Throughout my service, in fact since the six year old with his thin life story, I had always written. Silly rhymes, short stories, general ramblings. I knew, deep down, I’d write a book one day and five years out of the military, I started in earnest. A couple of misfires, a few writer blocks and an eventual breakthrough, saw me finishing it four years later.

Which is a good thing, because in the delay, Publish-on-Demand technologies had come to the fore and for the first time new authors had a real choice in how they brought their books to a global audience. I could either try to break into the traditional publishing houses, or, I could act independently. My inherent impatience made up my mind for me. I wasn’t prepared to wait years to be ‘discovered’, when I could launch my novel into the world almost immediately. Luckily for me, the reviews were good and the confidence they instilled, led me to start on another. This year will see my fourth released. It also sees a truth revealed, four and a half decades late.

What do I want to be when I grow up? A writer, Miss. A writer.

Ian Andrew is the author of the alternate history, A Time To Every Purpose and the Wright & Tran series of crime novels that includes Face Value, Flight Path and the new release, Fall Guys. He is also the author of the ‘Little Book of Silly Rhymes and Odd Verses’. You can follow him on Facebook, Twitter and his blog at ianandewauthor.com