Guest author - Julian Griffith

I'm delighted to have julian_griffith - yet another author I've known since before they took up their professional pen - as my guest today. So...

What inspired you to start writing?

I've been writing ever since I was a small child, so it's hard to say! I suppose part of it is wanting to make stories out of what I've seen in the world – the first “book” I ever wrote was the story of a vacation trip my family took to St. Croix, when I was five. And then there were the stories I wrote because I couldn't get more of the worlds I loved any other way – I wrote stories set in Middle-Earth when I was seven – and the stories I just plain made up out of my own head. I think my mother may still have a few of those early ones – she was always the sort to save my school papers. I'm afraid to ask. ( Read more... )

Love Continuance and Increasing from Storm Moon.

Newsletter eighty five (includes free Cambridge Fellows story)

We’re off on holiday tomorrow, so excuse two weeks of what may be radio silence. I don’t think that where we’re staying has wi-fi. (Blessing or curse? Only time will tell.)

News

My short story “Secrets” (Age of sail mystery with supernatural and m/m elements) will be in an Elm Books anthology of similar tales, tentative release date Halloween.

There’s also a little Jonty and Orlando (with added Alan Turing) story going into the Lazy beagle charity anthology (of which more news when I get it).

Talking of Jonty and Orlando, here’s a little going away pressy from me. Cambridge Fellows meets...well let’s just say my thanks go to Alex Beecroft for letting me play with her characters, her name and her good reputation.

Pride, Prejudice, Persuasion and all the rest

Pride

Jonty Stewart put down his book and picked up his thoughts.
He’d never been a great fan of H.G. Wells, but Orlando had insisted that he give this book a try and—glory be!—he’d not regretted it. A strange book, or so it had proved, a mixture of scientific and sociological speculation, entertaining but rather disturbing. Jonty wondered whether he should ask Dr. Panesar if such a time machine would be possible, if some future generation would be able to take to travelling across the centuries, as his own generation were wrestling to make travel in the skies a practical reality.
Second thoughts suggested that might not be the most reliable way forward, as Dr. P—who considered everything possible—was bound to say “yes”.
Still, a bit of speculation on the topic would stave off the ennui; Jonty had to find something to do for the next week. He turned to the empty space in his bed, a space bereft of Orlando Coppersmith, who’d left that very morning for an important mathematical conference at St. Andrew’s. He had a paper to deliver and wanted to make a really good fist of it, unlike the previous occasion when he’d muttered into his waistcoat for forty five minutes and bored everyone rigid. Orlando had been in such a state on leaving the house that he’d come back twice, once because he’d got it into his bonce that he’d not packed any clean socks—despite the fact that both Jonty and Mrs. Ward had checked his case—and a second time because he’d not kissed Jonty goodbye.
Poor Orlando; Jonty loved him beyond all reasoning, even when he was grumpy and obstinate, even when he ate the last bull’s-eye in the bowl. Even when Jonty had been lured by Jimmy Harding, almost beyond the power of any man to resist, he’d defied temptation and remained obstinately true to his lover.
“Lead us not into temptation.”  Well, he’d been led, he’d escaped and Papa would have been proud of him, if he’d ever found out, which thank the Lord he hadn’t. Long may that state of affairs—all those states of affairs—continue.( Read more... )

Love

Charlie