MEET Joe Green — the accidental author.

The 69-year-old from Horwich only began writing stories as a way to entertain his four grand-children and help to send them to sleep — but 10 years later he has had his first book pub-lished.

The book, which consists of five separate children’s stories, is entitled Once Upon a ... The Adventures of Elizabeth, Thomas, Leila and Samuel — and the title carries the names of Joe’s grandchildren for whom the stories were originally dreamt up.

He said the fact that he is now a published author has not yet sunk in, adding: “I didn’t start writing with the aim of getting published — it was simply to entertain the grandkids.”

It was Joe’s brother Peter who encour-aged him to take his writing further and helped to edit his work.

He also provided the illustrations for the book.

His brother is also a published author, having written a book of poetry — On the Wings of Reality.

Peter, also from Horwich, said: “I am so proud of Joe, these stories really are fantastic.

“I kept telling him how good they were when he was writing them down for the kids and in the end my daughter Claire typed them up and I helped to edit them and provide the illustrations and now it has been published.”

The stories in the book feature the adventures of princes and princesses in the gardens of a magical castle. Joe said that the ideas for the stories have come to him in a number of interesting places.

He said: “I wrote one in Sri Lanka and one in Cuba and one time I was on a plane and couldn’t get to my notepad so I ended up writing 1,600 words on the back of sick bags.”

One thousand copies of the book have now been printed. Joe says he will see how the book goes, but added that he still has “plenty more stories up his sleeve”.

The book is available from Amazon for £7.95, published by JPA Publishing.