My book of short stories is now available via Leg Iron Books – Kindle so far, the print version will be up in a few days.
Many, many years ago, an English teacher told me that I couldn’t write. I’ve long since forgotten what prompted the remark, but I still recall it some forty-odd years later. Being a congenitally contrary cove, I ignored her advice, as I am wont to do in such cases and I wrote anyway. So when the muse takes me, I write stories that spring, unbidden, from the idiosyncratic realms of my imagination – a surreal, parallel universe where I seem to spend much of my available time.
These stories, then, are a collection built up during approximately twenty years or so of idle scribbling, distilling that muse when, perhaps, I should have been doing something more productive. Some of them have seen the light of day on my blog. Most, however, have been written and then stashed away in the recesses of the hard drives of various computers, never to be seen again until now.
When I dusted them down for editing in preparation for this anthology, I realised that some of the ideas have dated, but rather than update them, I have left them in the time they were created, for that is where they belong. The ideas espoused by Richard “Boots” Maguire in Greenbelt, for example, would probably be somewhat different if I was to write his story now. Indeed, if I was to revisit him, likely as not, I would find that he has deserted his party and is now a curmudgeonly independent, for even in those days, he didn’t quite fit in. As Piers Beauchamp observed at their first meeting, he was in the wrong party; but to me, that contradiction makes him all the more interesting.
Other characters keep returning, such as Pascale Hervé, who sprang to life as a minor character during the creation of an early attempt at a novel. The novel really wasn’t worth publishing, but Pascale persisted and she still provides inspiration.
Morning Cloud is another character with more than one tale to tell. She came about when I decided that I wanted to write a western. She appeared to me just as she did to young Jack that summer day in 1888 – riding into town, covered in trail dust, ready to put the world to rights, and straight into a gunfight. As Morning Cloud took form – along with the people in her back story – I realised that there were two stories to be told here. So we have The Revenge of Morning Cloud and Morning Cloud’s Law.
I don’t stick to any one genre as I will touch on any idea that takes my fancy, from the Morning Cloud westerns to ecological disaster in Fifteen Years, to corruption in local politics in Greenbelt to Arthurian elves riding dragons in Myffanwy’s Magic and space opera in Hercules and Perseus, and karma visited through multiple existences in Omega and Memoirs; some romance in Interior Design and Dandy Lion and Minxy Lynx and I do love a ghost story; Death’s Deputy and The Dead Don’t Lie, – so in these pages you will find criminal conspiracy, politics, science-fiction, time travel, ghosts and death, westerns, romance and fantasy, not to mention a crossdressing spy and even a Tudor Queen. Sometimes they crossover genres, so are in a world of their own, much like me, I guess.
All of these characters have become a part of me – probably because they already were – and as I let my imagination take flight they grew and became entities in their own right. I hope you, the reader, will enjoy the journey they take you on, as much as I enjoyed the journey of creating them and writing their stories.
Update: The print version is now up on Amazon.