Guardian Chronicles

     Unlike a lot of authors I haven't "always wanted to write". Both my parents were artistic in their ways. My father could paint and my mother would embroider, crochet and knit. Both myself and my sister followed my father. My sister became a textile designer and I became a primary school teacher with a major subject in Art. So what started me on the road to writing?

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      My father was a science fiction fan and I would sit on the sofa watching the early sci fi series on TV with him. The earliest I remember was Quatermas and the Pit. The only thing I remember about it was large insects being found in a hole in the ground.

     The first fiction book I remember reading was H.Rider Haggard's King Soloman's Mines. Then I graduated onto H.G Well's War of the Worlds, then John Wyndham, Ray Bradbury and Isaac Asimove.

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        My love of sci fi drove me to want to read as much as I could, but at eighteen, there seemed to be a lack of novels that interested me, so I decided to write my own short stories for fun. I remember reading a story about time police, but unfortunately can't remember who wrote it. It started with a man in 1940's America applying for a job, and then finding out it involved time travel.

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       I also had an interest in detective series on TV, and as the idea of time travelling police appealed to me, I decided to combine the two genres. I change the time travel to space travel and my stories began. My hero was an alien from a different planet in a different galaxy. He starts off as a planet bound detective and is then seconded to space duty where he remained.

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               Relaxed and  happy on an outing

                    with the family twenty years ago

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      Over the years from being eighteen to my sixties, I gradually expanded my short stories into novels. The main reason being I got carried away when writing and ended up with a novel so large it could have been used as a doorstop. Even so, the thought of being published never entered my head.

      Then, seven years ago, the leader of the writing group I was part of told us about a new publisher starting up in Spain. They were requesting novels and he told us all to apply. To my surprise, they asked for the entire novel after reading the exerpt. They had four readers who wrote reports that were sent back to us. One said they loved it and read the whole thing in four days, which was quite a feat. Reader two and reader three said it needed serious editing; they were right about that! But the last one really made my heart sing. They said they weren't expecting to like my novel, but something kept them turning the pages. Despite this, the publisher said my book lacked "Universal Appeal"and didn't publish it. But they made me think seriously about publishing.

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                            All dolled up

                        for a posh night out.

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      Between then and now, I have travelled the same route as every other author. I've sent my work to several main stream publishers and it's been rejected every time. I have a theory that they don't like the combination of sci fi and detective. Even so, I did have another moral boost when I entered a competition. While my novel was (yet again) rejected, the editor took the time to critique the first page. She praised parts of it, made suggestions for improvement, and told me I was on the right track. Even so, I gave up trying to get it published with the main stream publishers, and went down the self publishing route.

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     My first attempt was a disaster.Even after reading it many times, and using the spell checker, when the book was finally published I was so ashamed and disappointed it made me stop trying to publish for a few years. I couldn't understand why there were so many spelling mistakes, missed out words and grammatical mistakes after all those read throughs. My daughter told me why. When she went to the University of Leicester the first thing they did with new students was to offer a dyslexia test. She was diagnosed with mild dyslexia. On a trip home in the holidays, she was reading over my shoulder and pointed out yet more mistakes. Then she told me I made the same errors as her and that I must be dyslexic. She was given a computer and text reading software, and she suggested I got one as well. So now I have a text reader and use it constantly.

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      Masquerade is the first novel in a series of novels called The Guardian Chronicles.

     I am part of the masquerade. I'm hiding my identity like the dectective, his assistant and the serial killer. The reason being, as stated before, I'm shy. I want to remain anonymous, stay out of sight and be the one not noticed. As for my book, I want the opposite and I hope you enjoy it.

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     Finally I have uploaded two quotes that kept me going through the times of self-doubt, depression and sheer tiredness of reading the same thing twenty times and every time reading something

​different.

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