Biography

It probably all began with fairy tales, but the first tales I remember are Joel Chandler Harris' Brer Rabbit tales. At some point, my mother began reading Enid Blyton to me and I became addicted to her fantasy story The Book of Brownies, which I demanded at bedtime for what may have been years on end.
As a reader I had a somewhat late start. The Lord of the Rings started me off reading fantasy on my own and that is the way my tastes ran for about seven years.
By the end of my second decade I had moved on to more "serious" literature. For a time I even stopped reading fantasy altogether, having developed a taste for the more highbrow stuff. I finished my first short story at this time, and gave it to a fellow writer to critique. His opinion was not to be trusted, for he never admitted to me quite how terrible it was. It would be the work of C.S. Lewis, which I somehow missed as a child, that would eventually give me back my love of fantasy. Not that I had really put it behind me - I was in any case an avid reader of medieval literature and the Romantics.
My academic studies have been mostly in literature and the medieval. I was awarded a scholarship somewhere along the line and hold degrees in English and Medieval Studies.
My wife is Greek and she persuaded me to give up a life of the steady humdrum for uncertainty and romance in the land of Homer. I began dabbling in writing about two decades ago, starting with novels and moving on to short stories, which is probably the wrong way round but there you go. Thus far, I have finished about eight novels, all of which are biding their time. As for short stories, I have probably written over a hundred but it's hard to keep track. In 2010 I took Ray Bradbury's advice and wrote one story a week for a whole year. This was my response to a challenge he put before aspiring writers in one of his talks - write 52 stories, and I defy you to write 52 bad ones. I like some of the ones I've written so he was probably right, though of course I am not the proper judge of the work.
I hope there'll be something of interest on the site or that writers with similar interests will get in touch.