They say that the writing should matter, not the author. They also say that you should write about what you know. Well, I’m quite well-informed on types of sausages and how to make your own at home, but that doesn’t seem the best start to a glittering literary career.

I started producing what I would call dark fiction (fantasy and crime)  about twenty five years ago, but then a career in health research got in the way. The more work projects there were to manage, the less time I spent writing , rewriting or promoting my fiction. Eventually I stopped writing altogether.

But now I’m back, and this time it’s personal. Unfortunately I’m also old, worried about my apple trees and quite agoraphobic, none of which applied before.

The author (hiding behind tree on left)

Being born in God’s Own Country (Yorkshire, obviously), and by the North Sea, was a gift in itself. Bleak purple moors, towering cliffs and enough  history to start your own channel. I grew up in a village which was too small to have its own church or pub.  I could walk past the mere where children drowned on a regular, if mostly mythical basis,  along the gorse winds where the foxes lurked, and up to a three hundred foot drop of sheer white chalk above the basking rocks of the grey seals.

My grandfather was a German prisoner in the Great War, after which he bizarrely joined the Queen’s Own Cameron Highlanders. My father was an eccentric lighthouse keeper and gun dealer, and my mother worked harder than anyone to keep us from debtor’s gaol. I am six foot tall, good-natured and have my own beard. What more could you ask?

Well, you could ask for a publisher, but I suppose that this renaissance is better late than never. Who knows what might come along as a result of this website?

Arthritic fingers, probably. And a few followers who think that my stuff’s OK as long as you don’t have to pay for it. Harrumble!