Or at least the writing side of me, not all the: 'I worked in a chip shop/ Mars Bar factory/I was an architectural drawings maker/ photographic stylist (driving around London like a manic cabbie) for far to many years / etc.
Time to knit together all the years that I've been doing this writing thing and lay it out on paper, or screen. This post will become paper sooner than later as I don't at all trust this spooky internet place which will no doubt disappear within a not so far off point…(see Londonia).
I've been making blog books as I go along, a strange and rather expensive procedure where one downloads the chosen posts into afore-mentioned internet place/Blog-to-Book company, and a shiny hardback appears from somewhere a few weeks later.
Actually . . . I think CVs usually start with the present day's activities, but it feels more relevant to me to start at the beginning.
Anyway, anyway. So . . .
Mr mint and the monster
My first wax crayon, pencil and floppy exercise book novel at the age of about seven.
Third year art school final project - collection of short stories, sadly (for me) lost somewhere in a move.
Alfi Beasti, don't eat that!
A story of fussy eating habits inspired by our own fussy eater, published by Puffin Books in 2004.
After a period of illustration and painting I started writing for the adult market, starting with my trilogy: 'Going out in the Midday Sun'. These books have links with Londonia, and most of my other novels. In fact, all my novels have links with each other . . .
Londonia
The idea for the novel commenced, as often happens for me, during a swim - woman, in the future, living in a church with a horse named Kafka. The story changed many times but the main character, Hoxton, remained true to my first idea of a feisty female trader living in the chaos of a lawless city sprawl beyond the order and constraints of a central power base. The novel is dystopian but I'd rather term it 'dyst-hopia'. Grimness with hope.
...Londonia by Kate Hardy is a magnificent book on many levels. It's impossible to categorise this as a dystopian or sci-fi work, although it is both. It's much more than that, completely shorn of every tired cliché from that genre; it manages to combine no small dread of an only too prescient future with a glorious story of human spirit...
Londonia was published by Tartarus Press in 2020.
Smithi, Hatfield and the South (working title) is the follow-up book to Londonia and has been edited to publication standard.
Jez
Adapted from a short story, Dog; from Dog, and other tales, my short story collection.
An alien arrives on Earth in Epping Forest and makes his way to shelter in a woman's shed. Assigned to study humans and report back to his planet he instead falls in love with the shed-owner and becomes marooned. His presence on the planet slowly but surely changes everything for mankind.
The Seventy-Seventh Book
The tale of luckless, book shop owner, Hamish Harris, and how the discovery of a never-before-seen book rockets his life into euphoric chaos.
The original short story which inspired the novel was chosen to be read by Anton Lesser on the excellent and now sadly defunct site, 'Cracked Eye'. I still have the recording and it is delicious...
The Panto Horse End.
After an untimely death within the back end of a pantomime horse, Marion Peel arrives in what she assumes is the local hospital but is in fact, Perpetuania, where she faces certain complicated time-travel choices concerning her future existence.
The Couch.
An eighteenth-century couch's narration starts within a Loire chateau as he/she observes the antics of the building’s new owner, rockstar, Todd Brightwater. The story follows the changing fortunes of Todd, his offspring, and on into future generations of the Brightwater family to conclude during a far-off time on Hampstead Heath as the couch becomes the centre of the then inhabitants' evening rituals.
Outcrier.
My current novel set in an unspecified time following the life of boatman and ex-town crier, Opera-Jo.
6,000 words in and I feel it's going to be a very long story - in a good way; already the tangents are taking hold of my pen/index fingers/keyboard.
So, there we are. Writing is essential to me, and I work on whatever my current project is every day, the most productive time being 6:00 am with tea and hot water bottles in my study (bed).
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