About Me:

Literature has always been my passion. Just as some people comfort-eat to assuage feelings of fatigue, loneliness, and melancholy, I tend to comfort-read.

In the UK, the prevailing conception of classic literature (besides Shakespeare) gravitates towards Charles Dickens and Thomas Hardy. Unfortunately for me, Thomas Hardy does not strike a chord with me, while I loathe most of Charles Dickens’s work. As far as I’m concerned, he is about as subtle as a sledge-hammer, and his characters are mere caricatures: grotesque exaggerations that mock the depth and complexity of real human personality. Celebrated post-modern literature, such as Yann Martel’s “Life of Pi”, and Zadie Smith’s hysterical realism (a term coined by critic James Wood, not me), also leaves me cold. The one common thread uniting all of these pieces seems to be a willingness to sacrifice realistic characterisation, and sometimes even plausible plotlines, for the twin gods of social commentary and entertainment. This literary mindset alienates me, as a reader, on two levels: first, I consider in-depth characterisation to be paramount; second, I’d rather not have any “message”, no matter how valid or righteous, rammed down my throat through the medium of fiction. By all means use literature to convey a message, as the finest works generally do; but please respect your readers and be subtle about it; show, don’t tell. I should qualify this tirade by emphasising that it reflects only my personal tastes, and not the overall merit of the writers or works cited.

Because of my aversion to traditional icons and contemporary trendsetters, my literary tastes have long been shunned as immature and lightweight. Yet I could argue that most of the novels gracing my bookshelf have as much right to be considered “classics” as anything written by Dickens. I have read, re-read, and worn thin the work of Henry James, Edith Wharton, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Somerset Maugham, Tennessee Williams, Bernard Shaw, and French writers including Moliere, Alexander Dumas, and Francoise Sagan, to mention just a few examples. And I’ll never forget the beauty and poignancy of John Knowles’s “A Separate Peace”, which touches on the same themes as the classroom favourite “Lord of the Flies”, but does so with a sensitivity that William Golding never matched. Gene and Finny were still bright in my memory long after I had shrugged off my horror and disgust at Piggy’s graphically portrayed death.

Writing is my other comfort. Amusingly, I wrote my first chapter-based, serialised story at the age of five, in a lined exercise book! Throughout my childhood and into my early teens, I was writing family and adventure stories for kids. Thereafter, I switched to adult mainstream fiction. In general, I struggle to write pithy, self-contained short stories, and concentrate my efforts on full-length novels, some of which have a science fiction setting. Fantasy, in contrast, does not come naturally to me; and until recently, I had never been tempted to write derivative/ transformative works...

Fan Fiction:

Playing the classic Phantasy Star series of video games, on the advice of my friend David Filip, changed that. It would be fair to say that PSII had almost as much impact on me as Ayn Rand’s “The Fountainhead”. To this day, I remember the progressive disillusionment with the status quo, the darkness intermingled with hope, and the iconic, revelatory ending. I thought no game could surpass it, until I played PSIV: The End of the Millennium, with its intensely likable, three-dimensional characters and implied spirituality. There were just enough hints about the background of the characters to inspire me to work on a prologue and full-length novelisation of the game itself, which continues to expand.

Sweet irony, then, that my first web-published fan fiction should relate to PSIII, which I enjoyed, but never really considered part of the series. I blame the friend who commented, on an online forum, about the potential for some Rhys/ Lena fan fiction. I cannot resist a writing challenge, and the story took shape before my eyes. On impulse, I penned the first chapter and uploaded it. It is being rewritten and the remaining 3-4 chapters will be added in due course. In spite of having written volumes of original fiction, this is the first time I have placed any of my fictional writing in the public view, so I’m curious to know how people will respond to it. If you're nice enough to read it, please leave me a review and help me improve. My e-mail address is hidden because of an intense dislike for junk mail, but I'm very friendly, so don't be shy about using the PM service to contact me.

Other Interests: Civil rights and privacy issues; music (eclectic tastes, including classical, rock, country…)

Favourite quotation:

Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms — to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way. -- Viktor Frankl