Tuesday, June 6, 2017

THE STORY SO FAR ...





I’ve always worn two hats as a writer … it helps to keep the work focussed and prevents the readers from becoming confused.  There comes to a stage, however, where one train of thought becomes exhausted and it needs to be left alone for a while.  Also, having spent the past thirty years at the computer, it also seems like a good time to stop (or ease off) writing and embrace other pastimes – if only as a means to recharge the batteries.

And I always wanted to be a writer – much to the derision of the school careers officer – and now, with twenty years as editor of a popular writers’ magazine and some fifty published titles to my credit, I think I can safely claim to have fulfilled that ambition and qualify as a professional author.  At the moment, I feel as though there’s nothing left for me to say on the non-fictional MB&S front although there are still a couple of ideas on the back burner and am now concentrating on my first love – novel writing.

My first novel, a modern Gothic offering called Whittlewood was published in 1997 and still has a modest cult-following, having just been re-released twenty years later with the re-launch of Ignotus Press UK, along with many of those other popular titles that have been sold for silly money on the internet during the intervening years.  I have now managed to complete the first titles in the metaphysical thriller saga, The Temple House Archive (House of Strange Gods, Realm of Shadow, Hour ‘Twixt Dog and Wolf); a cosy-crime series, The Hugo Braithwaite Mysteries (The Devil’s Door, Sea-Wife’s Walk) and an historical vampire series The Vampyre’s Tale (Spartan Dog) – with plenty more to follow.

The plan for the future is to restrict myself to completing one non-fiction title and one novel per year, and concentrate on creating my Japanese garden and a self-sufficiency vegetable plot for relaxation.   What all writers know, however, is that writing is an addiction and one can never be fully cured of the obsession to write – so how those plans will fare remains to be seen.

I’m often asked for advice for new writers but this is extremely difficult to impart since we all approach our craft from different viewpoints.  I spent twenty-years as a creative writing tutor during those magazine-editorial years, but the only real observation I can make today is that it’s got to come from inside you.  There are thousands of competent writers out there but those that can always be relied upon to keep on publishing are those who have the passion in their soul for the language and the written word.  For it is that passion that keeps the ideas flowing; the odd phrase that suggests a whole novel; an experience that triggers an avalanche of sensations as in Proust’s madeleines  that conjure memories produced by putting conscious effort into remembering events, people, and places.


Over the years I’ve met many who have produced their first book and then rest upon their laurels while constantly talking about the next – this success is the culmination of many years of writing but the second never comes easy.  Often the completion of a first book has sucked the writer dry of desire and creativity – and we may have to wait several years for the second; or there may be others but they lack the fire and enthusiasm of the first.  Writers are born not made, since their creativity is forged in the fires of the imagination or, as Oscar Wilde wrote: “Yes: I am a dreamer for a dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.”