I’m a father, grandfather and very lucky man to be sharing a home with the woman I love. I live in Herefordshire in the UK, in a lovely rural spot about four miles from the world famous ‘town of books,’ Hay-on-Wye. My first blog, ‘New Love, New Life’ deals with my moving to the area and now I really can’t see myself anywhere else. Cider orchards, lots of bookshops, the Black Mountains, the lovely River Wye and of course, sheep. Lots of sheep. Pity about them.
In my previous lives, I’ve been an IT systems designer and a professional musician; I’ve worked with special needs children and as an office manager for a recruitment agency. But my writing has always been there. Now I have an office of my own to write in, my writing is usually accompanied by the sound of birds singing and of course the audible click of the kettle turning itself off ready for the next bout of coffee.
It took me a long time of starting and never finishing stories before I finally decided to self publish my first novel ‘Smallbrook.’ It started, as so many stories did, as episodes and little scenes, which were beginning to feature the same characters and evoke the same period (the First World War), set against a rural, agricultural background. Recognising this proved the turning point and gave me the push to finally finish the story, throwing it upon the mercy of the reading public.
My second novel, ‘Greenhill,’ was a change of genre and genre is a subject I dealt with in a blog ‘To Genre Or Not To Genre.’ It is more contemporary, dealing with the issues of trust, betrayal and identity. It was developed in the same way as ‘Smallbrook’: linking scenes together, re-writing, re-shaping and throwing away bits until a cohesive whole appeared.
Blogs are my way of throwing ideas around and developing thoughts and issues that interest me or make me laugh. Hopefully, they will have the same effect on other people. I’m also using one strand of my blog to serialise another novel, ‘The Golden Man,’ an old fashioned adventure story set in Venezuela in the years preceding the First World War.
Happy reading!
Gary Cann 