Leeds Author R.A. Howitt: A Writer’s Triumph Over Adversity

‘New2theScene is a platform for engaging with writers who haven’t had their bestseller yet. So find us. Start a relationship with us. And see where that relationship leads.’

In 2022, I had a new position as a headteacher in a primary school, a position I’d been striving towards for ten years, and the realisation of how unhappy I was hit unexpectedly. Hard. Because, like a character in any story, what I wanted and what I needed were not the same. And stood at the side of the train tracks each morning – not dramatically considering the end – I knew what I had to do. Quit.

I knew what I wanted instead. To begin writing again.

Once this dawned, passion, dedication, happiness has snowballed and manifested into helping others engage with their passion. I created New2theScene to help authors who haven’t had bestsellers be noticed. A place where writers could indulge in their passion. A community that wanted to discover and support new talent.

From there, I set myself the goal of becoming an author, and blogged about each step. From there, I created a podcast interviewing authors which can be downloaded on all platforms. From there, I launched short story and poetry competitions, which led to inviting twenty-three entrants to write a novella together – one chapter per week before passing it on, which they’re in the midst of.

From there, I published Daniel King: ASD (Alien Specialist with Dad), exclusive to N2tS for the first few months – before Amazon or any other platform gets the opportunity to sell it, which is a bold strategy, limiting the places to stock it. From there, other projects are developing, like author and mental health campaigner M. Jonathan Lee serialising his life in a six-part biography for the site alone. From there, who knows…

I haven’t been an expert on any of these things, and yet I do them anyway, learning along the way.

R.A. Howitt lives in Leeds with his partner and three children (offspring, not randomly picked), who he is happy to rank in order of favouritism, although this changes daily.
After writing and not publishing half a dozen novels, he didn’t produce a manuscript for twenty years – such are the scars from rejection. During that time, he was a teacher, a tutor, became a headteacher, then quit it all to return to his first love: writing.

The Daniel King series is his first work since rebooting his computer – in every sense. The first book in the series is Daniel King: ASD (Alien Specialist with Dad).

R.A. Howitt founded New2theScene in 2022 to help the discovery of other new talent in fiction. He creates competitions, podcasts, articles, blogs, all with the aim of supporting the discovery of new talent in fiction that book lovers may not have heard of.

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