As a young gen X, escape was text and film. I recall feeding on a never-enough stream of fiction and non-fiction, the latter always huddled under that troublesome category: Earth Mysteries. I have fond recollections of reading classic ghost and horror tales, from Armada and Pan especially.
One day I'm going to put my own ghost story collection together. It'll be my way of honouring a childhood blessed and haunted by Bradbury, Blackwood, Timperley, Danby, Tapp, Bloch and so many others.
As an adult, my interest in paranormal subjects and magick deepened. It was clear then - and now - our world is far richer than we can easily grasp. This 'convincing' often drives me to write.
Reading tastes moved but the themes remained consistent. Years would pass in the company of Lethbridge and Fortune on one side, with an eclectic mix of writers such as Gogol, Kafka, James Herbert and Guy Smith on the other.
Luckily, secondary schooling fed me with Orwell, Steinbeck and Solzhenitsyn, which I am extremely grateful for. We were an unruly lot in class at times, but I still remember reading 'One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich' and experiencing that deep, chilling flash of 'wow, this is it.'
During my teens I cast the net into photography, film and music, developing eclectic tastes. Raw cinema has always been a huge love and the controversial across the ages still excites, inspiring me to explore through writing.
For years I played the submissions game. Obsessing over the most minute detail prior to pushing my latest fiction or non-fiction piece. I had some success with my non-fiction, several articles appearing in the great British occult magazine Prediction, now sadly no-longer with us. But overall? Lean times. A lot of effort. A lot of frustration.
There's no stress these days. Now I just publish on my own terms. Most important, I'm having fun with it. I've always been driven by the thirst for new ideas, so freedom to roam is absolutely vital to me.
I have no expectations other than to just go ahead, take a drink from the well and create some fire. There's plenty in the tank, so if you like my world of restless, bizarre fiction, stick around. Let's explore together, writer and reader, and see what happens.
From Last Days on Swan Street, The #15