There’s no doubt that I’m a product of the seventies. Mostly the nineteen seventies, though the eighteen seventies do have their influence. And I doubt there will be many more people of my year of manufacture entering the weird and strange fiction fields so late. It’s two years now since I was first published, a peculiarity due to the fact that I was persuaded to enter the Interweb world and inter-web-act with the writing world. So I did, and decided to write short stories. At the age of 57.

Being an older, later writer is odd for many reasons:

• You don’t have a (visible) pedigree of ten or twenty years of attempted or actual publication on which to fall back in discussions, self-promotion or marketing.
• You can’t rely on a ten year plan, or whatever people have. You have to do it now, and get it out there. You might keel over before that time is out, and thus…
• You have to be immediately identifiable, to come to people’s attention as someone whose work people might want to follow.
• The people you work with, and your writing peers, can be thirty or more years younger than you. Their influences and their styles are so much more current, or period-savvy, than your own.
• You don’t have a professional network of writing, editing and publishing people. You don’t really know anyone who might be useful to you.

I’d written before at length, done a lot of writing, and some editing and indexing, in technical fields. I’d also produced a few inexplicable novels, which I mostly sat on due to the day job, and the inordinate time it used to take to post things back and forth. Most curiously, I came close to have a novel published in the late eighties/early nineties, by chance, as I corresponded with a publisher about an Edwardian horror novel. They loved it, but in the end, the bosses felt the whole concept was too uncommercial. So I gave in and didn’t hawk it around. I stopped hawking anything around.

Until the Grand Re-emergence. The concepts in that novel became my series Tales of the Last Edwardian, almost thirty years later. And there are quite a few published stories in the series now, with more to come. At the moment it runs from 1886 (yes, that is Victorian) to 1940 (yes, that’s whatever you want to call it). The Last Edwardian is centred around a number of linked characters, some of them born in the mid to late Victorian period, whose actions and legacies continue through to the present day.

(The key to the series is Henry Dodgson, an illegitimate son of Lewis Carroll who ends up being one of the circle attracted to Carnacki, author William Hope Hodgson’s occult detective. Dodgson is often the least important character, if he appears at all, but everyone else links to him in some way. And he is the only one still alive in 2018. I’ll explain that one day, if I’m fortunate to last long enough.)

Older writers might be advised to write what they know, or in fields with which they are familiar. And to tap into what few links they have. But I have a grasshopper mind, and get bored easily. So the first story I submitted, in late 2015 I think, was a sort of young adult myth reworking about ogres to a US market I’d never heard of. They took it straight away, and published it in April/May 2016.

The second thing I wrote was a military spy-spiritualist-mystery novella set in 1908, which even dragged in an ageing and sceptical Sherlock Holmes. The third thing I wrote was the story of a mother and daughter serving Nyarlathotep in his millennia-long plan against the source of all cosmic horror. Those sold on submission as well – but you couldn’t exactly say I was following a pattern.

I have no advice for older writers. It’s exhausting, you don’t make enough money, marketing is a nightmare, and almost everything I’ve had published has been through contacts made in North America, not the UK. You can expect publishers to fold on you before you blink, and when you’re 60, waiting a year to see if something sells is a hell of a long wait. Also surprisingly pertinent, a single set of health problems can cut you out for a month or two at just the wrong time, and the world moves on whether you’re there or not. In some cases, especially where older people are running the small independent presses with whom you might work, you can be left wondering whether you or the publisher will go into hospital first.

(I might also mumble about the aches, the stress on ancient neck, back, fingers and wrists, and the tiredness when trying to deal with the huge time differences between continents and publishers. But loads of people have to deal with those, anyway.)

It’s been worth it, yes, but sustaining the piston strokes is hard work. This year I should have the following published (leaving out things I can’t yet announce), with once again no discernible connection between most of them:

On Abydos, Dreaming. The story of a scarred and bitter golem operative searching for death or redemption on a planet where an incomprehensible alien artefact dictates telempathic storms. Short story in the Survivors anthology from Lethe Press.

Death Among the Marigolds. During the Second World War, actress Margaret Rutherford gets confused with her stage role as Madame Arcati by a young woman who believes she is haunted. Novelette in the Silver Sleuths anthology from 18thWall Productions.

Sanctuary. A girl of the Finnfolk seeks shelter in a village where the old ways of the Cunning Folk still hold, and a community is under threat. Short story in Weirdbook magazine/anthology.

In the Hour of the Pale Dog. An old woman employed as a leatherworker in a dusty, unimportant village must draw on her own past to face the plains reavers who come to cleanse the area. Short story in Skelos magazine.

Songs of the Burning Men. A sombre tale of the horror of the trenches in World War One, and the baleful influence of a record left behind by dead French troops. Short story in the Chromatic Court anthology from 18thWall Productions.

Those Who Stay. The manager of a strange and isolated hotel on the cliffs recounts the tale of three visitors and their fate at the Langton. Short story in the Voices in the Darkness anthology from Ulthar Press.

The Assassin’s Coin. Being the details of how Mr Edwin Dry became known as the Deptford Assassin, and how he decided that the Whitechapel Murderer was a nuisance who needed removing. Novel from IFD Publishing.

So there you are. You’re never to old to do something stupid, basically.