My Writing
Novels
Short Stories
Fragments of My Mother in Rewind: A Collection
Academic writing
Depicting Crime in Climate Change in Environmental Crisis and Human Rights
I have been a reviewer for the fantasy-hive and fantasy faction and a judge for the Self-Published Fantasy Blog Off. I attend speculative fiction conventions, most recently Norncon and always Bristolcon.
I have written a self-published fantasy trilogy, contributed to several short story anthologies, and my latest novel is on submission from Sam Edenborough at Greyhound Literary Agency.
I have a PhD in creative writing, focused on climate change fiction, and I find politics gets into everything – but particularly speculative fiction. As is shown in a couple of my favourite quotes.
“Fiction is the lie through which we tell the truth.” Albert Camus
“Resistance and change often begin in art. Very often in our art, the art of words.” Ursula K. Le Guin
After a 32 year career in education, I took early retirement and am enjoying the time it gives me to read, write and (occasionally) rant about the state of the world.
While the expectation used to be that one would become more conservative as one got older, I have found myself travelling in distinctly the opposite direction, and – as the great Kathy Burke put it,
“I love being ‘woke’. It’s much nicer than being an ignorant fucking twat.”
Fantasy-Reviews is my blogsite for posting Reviews, Reports, Reveals and Rants from the world of Speculative Fiction, as well as sharing some resources and thoughts that have proven useful to me in my writing journey.
I live in Belfast in Northern Ireland with my wife Ash and a variable number of dogs as we support the fostering efforts of Cavaliers in Need (the dogs not the English Civil War faction).
Northern Ireland is famously a country where you can experience “four seasons in a day” which also helps to generate some glorious sunsets and stupendous rainbows.
We have four children, the youngest of whom was an enthusiastic beta reader of my self-published fantasy trilogy, which became the bedtime reading more or less as fast as I could write it. Consequently he is the source of my nom-de-plume.
