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'll put my own ghost story collection together. It'll be my way of honouring a childhood haunted by Bradbury, Blackwood, Timperley, Danby, Tapp, Bloch and 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 'confusion or convincing' is a large driver for my writing.
Reading tastes moved but themes remained consistent. The company of Lethbridge and Fortune one side, an eclectic mix of fiction writers such as Gogol, Kafka, James Herbert and Guy Smith on the other.
Thinking back, high school fed me well (Orwell, Steinbeck, Solzhenitsyn) and I'm extremely grateful for that. We were an unruly lot in class at times, but I can still remember reading 'One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich' and experiencing that deep, chilling flash of 'wow, this is it.'
I played the submissions game of course, everyone does. Obsessing over minute details only to have countless unread returns and negative pitches. I had some success with my non-fiction, several articles appearing in the great British occult magazine Prediction, sadly no-longer with us. But overall, lean times.
There's no stress these days. Now I just publish on my own terms, going where I want to go, as much as RL timescales allow. Most important, I'm having fun with it. I've always been driven by new ideas, the thirst of that, so freedom to roam is absolutely vital to me. I have no expectations other than to just write and publish. Drink from the well and create a little bit of fire where I can.
There's plenty energy left, a lot still in the nightmare tank. So if you like my world of restless, bizarre fiction, stick around. There's a lot to explore. Let's see what happens.
From Last Days on Swan Street, The #15