After Tom Mackenzie (b. 1939) self-published his memoir, The Last Foundling, in 2012, his 26-year-old son suggested he'd need to do some promotion otherwise he wouldn't sell many copies.

73-year-old Tom set up a Twitter account and a blog. The blog led first to a regular column for the local paper, The Plymouth Herald, and then a book deal with Pan Macmillan in 2014.The editors at Pan Macmillan wanted Tom to expand on his story before he was 20 years, asking him to writing an additional 40,000 words on that topic and changing his style to writing in the first person.While they did some 'tweaking' too, Tom insists 90% of the words in the book are his.