/brushes dust off profile

Wow, nobody's touched this for a while, eh? Might as well update it now I've got the time.

Hi. If you've found this, chances are you've stumbled across some of my writing. Or you're working through the author directory in alphabetical order, in which case may I compliment you on your tenacity. Anyway, I suppose I should tell you a little about myself.

I'm a nineteen-year-old student from Yorkshire (God's own county, and I'll hit anyone who disagrees). I'm currently at Oxford, working on a degree in history. Hence the frequent... "borrowings", shall we say, in my stories. For Ruin of Empire and A New Ally, you can blame a passion for Roman history that started with Colleen McCullough's fascinating Masters of Rome series and ended, pretty damn finally, with Augustan Rome this term. Yikes. For Space:1889, I guess you better lay the blame at the door of George Macdonald Fraser's Flashman series. If you like my stories- which is pretty unlikely- I heartily recommend that you pick up something by those authors.

Now, for updates. I'm very sorry if I don't update enough. I work on a lot of stuff that isn't good enough to publish- can you say "X-men self-insert", kids?- as well as some original fiction. May I also plead in my defence that I have to do a 2500-word essay every week? Sometimes more? And that I've just had four three-hour exams in four days? Sorry, bwana. I'll update more often in future. There's a few chapters of Ruin of Empire lurking on my hard-drive, as well as a prequel to the story featuring Caunen's dad. If I manage to polish them, there'll be another chapter of LXG, an extended edition of LOTR High and maybe even another chapter of A New Ally to come. Who knows? I might even update my Fictionpress account one of these days. Hmm... maybe not, though.

Apologies for length. Before I stop wasting your time, I'd like to take the opportunity to thank my beta, Natasha Roberts, a girl with far more talent than myself who takes pity on my feeble attempts at writing and turns them into literary gold. Or at least gilds them in places, so that in the right light they can pass for gold. Cheers, Tasha.

That's it, I guess. Best get back to the grindstone. Thanks for reading, uber-thanks for reviewing. Hope you enjoy it.

Update: 1st August.

You might have noticed that I haven't updated for a while, even by my usually lax standards. I'm really, really sorry, but I've had to find gainful employment as an "administration clerk", which seems remarkably like an updated version of a galley slave- no fat, sweaty Moroccans beating drums, at least not on my floor. As such, I'm not writing much and getting on the internet even less. Normal service will be resumed eventually, when I'll have some REALLY interesting stuff for you. Promise.

Oh, and by the way, I got a distinction in my exams. What a fluke, eh?

Update: 2nd October

If there's anybody out there into voodoo, please can you curse the salesman who sold me my laptop and make something fall off? It had theequivalent of a strokein the middle of the summer, so I had to toddle off to a computer shop and get a new hard drive fitted. Luckily, thanks to the data recovery department of the former KGB, I was able to recover most of what was on there. However,Ruin of Empire, sadly, is no more. I didn't lose too much of other stuff, but it'll almost certainly be a while before I'm in a position to update this. I'll still be writing, but it might be a few weeks before I can publish the stuff on the internet. Once again, endless apologies.