If you have stories that haven't been written down yet, and you know, somewhere, that they should be, then this is the book you have been waiting for.

Let me tell you why I'm writing it.

My grandmother died at ninety-three. She was born in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) in 1905, herded donkeys through the African bush as a child, and lived long enough to see the internet become business as usual. She was, in every sense, history in human form.

I was there the day she died. In bed and peaceful. She died surrounded by old photographs. I remember the moment she passed. I glanced up at those old photos and thought, "Who are they? Who were they to my gran?"

It felt like one moment I could have asked her, and the next, I couldn't.

I sat with that loss for a long time. And then I decided to do something about it.

I've spent years helping people tell, write, and share their stories. I've sat in retirement homes, genealogy groups, and family kitchens, listening to people describe the same paralysis: "I have all this material. I don't know what to do with it. I don't know where to start. I'm afraid of getting it wrong. I don't know how to turn this into a story people will want to hear!"

What I discovered is that the problem is never the material. The problem is the approach.

Most personal story or family history guides treat story-writing like a research project. They begin with timelines, genealogy charts, and document organisation. They produce dry, exhaustive records that nobody reads.

This book begins at the fireside.

It begins with the stories that matter. The moments that reveal character. The traditions that captured belonging. The difficult truths that deserve to be told with honesty and care.

It begins with your voice — the warm, alive version of you that already knows how to tell a story. Because you do. You tell stories every time you sit down with someone you love. This book simply teaches you to do it on the page.

The Fireside Method (the framework at the heart of this book) will show you how to: