My name is Niamh Calderwood. I like creative writing, and I have a Master’s degree in it. I want to share my stories with anyone who will read them. Writing has been an outlet at many high and low points throughout my life. I’ve referred to myself in the past as a binge writer, because there have been patterns when I’ll write a lot in a short space of time, then go a while without writing anything significant, before falling back into another hard binge.

Another personality quirk I’ve suffered from has involved multiple attempts to delete myself from the internet. It usually comes on sudden, sometimes with an obvious trigger; a response to something my nervous system perceives as a threat. But other times it’s just a feeling of dread brought on by some aspect of the modern world. So I go into overkill mode by pulling down my websites, deleting social media profiles, contacting interviewers and asking them to remove me from their blogs, and deleting or delisting self-published books.

I first started calling myself a writer about sixteen years ago when I was studying acting. I wrote a short novella or novelette. It was about a boy who didn’t fit in with the people around him, and it turned out the reason he felt that way was because his family and friends had all been replaced by doppelgangers. I published it as a paperback, and a couple of people bought copies from Amazon. In 2012 I wrote and directed a short film, very loosely based on my little book, which was screened at the Empire cinema in Newcastle upon Tyne as part of a student film festival. That year I also took part in a student theatre festival called Live Across Newcastle for which I co-wrote and co-starred in a play inspired by the 1989 comedy/thriller, See No Evil, Hear No Evil. Then in 2013, the year I graduated with a BA Hons in Contemporary Directing, I staged a show called The Gunpowder Kerfuffle. It was a comedy musical based on the events of the Gunpowder Plot of 1605. I wrote the script, composed the songs, recorded the backing tracks, and played the ghost of Queen Mary.

Since University, I’ve had several occupations. By the time I graduated I was lucky enough to be getting regular work with a theatre company who specialized in family entertainment. I played a lot of different characters for shows and events in a lot of different places including shopping malls and street corners. Around that time I was also being booked for the occasional background role in film and TV productions, and attending auditions for more substantial acting jobs. During the quieter months I needed some work to make ends meet so I applied to work at a cinema, and was hired as a cinema host. It was only meant to be a part-time gig to keep me going in the off-seasons, but it was good work and eventually I got promoted.

Becoming a cinema manager hit pause on my acting career. Getting into a motorcycle accident, burning out, moving back in with my parents for a while, and taking a retail job closer to home didn’t help either. By then I was twenty-two and feeling kind of stunted. I channeled my feelings into a novel, which I started and finished writing in late 2015, then left in a drawer for two years before publishing it in 2017. This book sold more than the previous one; around forty copies. And by then I was performing again too, although fluctuating circumstances led me to take another day job, this time doing retinal photography and dispensing glasses at a high street opticians practice.

In 2018 I met the woman who would become my wife. We were engaged after three months, and in early 2019 we moved into the attic apartment of a dilapidated Victorian house, overlooking England’s North East coast. Sat at a desk by the window of that attic, I wrote collections of poems, short stories, and essays, some of which appeared in online literary publications. Around this time I started getting sick a lot (it would be another seven years before I’d be diagnosed with the brain tumor which was silently plotting to destroy), so I wrote a lot about invisible illnesses. I also wrote about my personal demons; addiction, depression, generalized inner turmoil. And I wrote about being queer, because I am.

For a fleeting moment I seriously considered training as a Dispensing Optician. But circumstances changed again, and my time in optics came to an unremarkable end when I resigned to focus on my writing, completing my Master of Arts degree, and developing and maintaining websites for businesses on the side. Then the pandemic came and knocked me off my axis again. I became more unwell than I’d ever been, reducing my baseline health to a level it has yet to recover from. But I also found sobriety, wrote a queer and tragic novella, penned a bunch of short stories, and graduated by mail. I dabbled with a couple of different projects to earn my keep with varying success, failed to secure funding for a PhD, temped at a bank, then worked at a different bank, and before long I was twenty-nine years old, feeling like things didn’t add up.

At the beginning of 2022 we packed our bags and left the UK. It was something we’d both wanted to do for some time. Starting over from scratch was a challenge, but I’m happy to say it paid off. A week before my thirtieth birthday I started a new job as a video game developer. Now I script and write narrative for a popular sci-fi grand strategy game, and I work on my personal writing projects sporadically in my spare time. My life is unrecognizable compared to just a few years ago. I’m curious to see how things will change beyond 2026. And I’m really hoping we won’t just get wiped out by one of the many looming existential threats to human civilization.

Last updated 2026-10-01