David Baboulene was born in Kenley, south of London, England, the son of Bernard and Doreen Baboulene; the third of four children and the only boy in the family.
He was educated at Oxted County School but dropped out at the age of 16 to undertake an apprenticeship in the British Merchant Navy. His experiences from his work on cargo ships are documented in his books
Ocean Boulevardand
Jumping Ships, which recount his adventures around the world and his "hilarious and often bizarre" journey from a boy to a man.
David's first book,
The Blue Road, was published by Summersdale Publishers in 2002 , and relaunched in 2007 with the new title
Ocean Boulevard.Ocean Boulevard was described on TalkSport Radio as
One of the funniest books I have ever read and David himself was described as
a seriously funny man with a great gift for story-telling.
In 2003, David won the Euroscript Film Story competition - a Europe-wide competition sponsored by the European Film Commission - for his first novel
Mere Mortals. The first prize was to work with a professional scriptwriter to develop the story into a fully fledged screenplay. Since that success, David has had three movie deals - two in Hollywood and one in the UK - and has worked as a story consultant for both novels and screenplays.
David's first children's book
Kepple the Kitewas published in 2008, his second '''''Oopsie - I forgot!'''''
is due for publication in June2010. These children's books are illustrated by Kelly Chapman and published by DreamEngine Media Group .
Baboulene has also written a practical academic work on Story Theory —
The Principles that Lie Beneath All Good Stories — (publication October 2010), and is working towards a doctoral thesis through which he is undertaking original research into the power and mechanisms of subtext. David has also developed an objective set of metrics for assessing the 'value' of a story based on measuring subtext; i.e., how popular a story is likely to be with a mainstream audience.
David delivers seminars on story principles to creative writing clubs and other forums .
He appeared on BBC Radio 4 "Excess Baggage" with Sandi Toksvig in July 2009.