Me? As of now, circa AD2012, I’m a Medieval Archaeologist and Historian who writes novels. When I discuss what in particular I like to study, most people glaze over long before I get to specifics, so I don’t usually get a chance to continue. And they never get to hear that, in spite of my hard-won credentials and continued research, since I collapsed of exhaustion while working as a Medieval Archaeologist at Prague Castle, I haven’t actually been working in the field for almost two decades now. I’ve taught courses in Anglo-Saxon Studies for Cambridge University’s Madingley College since then, but I don’t do that now either, as the condition that developed from the collapse eventually put paid to that as well. Academia’s loss is hopefully the reading public’s gain since I now have the time to devote to providing them with books written about it instead of doing it.

I have a string of unfinished novels littering up my filing trays! I used to imagine that the phenomenon of “being published” would be a game-changer: a clamouring agent wringing from me my soul’s most beautiful music; me affecting an attitude of feigned surprise as the book into which I’ve poured three years of determined grit and sacrifice is getting the fairy godmother treatment and instantly transforming itself into fame, riches and happy-ever-after.

Needless to say, this certainly did NOT happen when, on my 40th birthday, I completed my book Worlds Without End. I classified it as a novel, a work of fiction, but in retrospect, it’s more of a fictional autobiography with a few stretches of the poetic license law to create a cliffhanger here and an interesting spark there. For instance, my heroine’s trip to the Broadstairs Folk Show at the end of Chapter Five... As the torchlight procession winds up in front of Morellis Ice Cream Parlour, the very pagan dragon cavorting in and out of a tangle of Morris Men gets well and truly baptised by a water-filled prophylactic, and Eartha belts out Amazing Grace into the ensuing silence!

I published it myself on Lulu.com in 2010. But… as an Indie author, there is no easy ride, agent or publisher. We have to work as hard to market and promote our work as we do to produce it! And a brain that produces fine literature is unlikely to be as good at these things without first traversing a very steep learning curve. My trajectory is still stuck in the foothills, but I am at least aware that I need one now. That’s a pretty good start … stay tuned!