An Author Interview By Hidden Gems HG: How would you describe yourself to somebody who isn’t familiar with your writing yet? JW: I’m a storyteller who learned to write. That took time – I drove big rigs for years. But as the decades rolled by the stories echoed louder in my head. I love the fantasy genre. The joyous release magical tales award the reader, helping them escape the norm – especially in a year like this one. New realms, magic, [...]
Reading Fantasy As An Antitode to 2020 ... It's good to write fantasy fiction during a turbulent year like 2020. It helps focus the mind, knowing, however crazy the plot you've weaved, it gets surpassed by the news that evening. What a year we're having! As a writer, I'm fortunate enough to squirrel away inside with the cat, penning tomes about nasty people cussing and hitting each other with sharp objects. I've got a few swords and swing them upon [...]
Do you believe in spirit animals? Many ancient cultures did. And why not? More's hidden than seen in this life. What if shapeshifters live amongst us still––individuals with the ability to change from person to beast, or bird, and then shift back again without detection? Useful, huh, if you could master without calamity or malfunction! Stressful, too, I would imagine. I've dabbled with this concept in my new novel, Blood Feud. I have three characters with these particular skills, which I'd like [...]
http://bit.ly/ThisBeastBites The Rise Of The Audio Book I love books, always have. Logical that for a writer, I suppose. But recently I've found less time for reading. There are so many distractions these days. Everyone is busy, moving around, the phone buzzing, emails pinging, apps updating, new shows on Netflix––always something else tugging your sleeve for attention when you reach for that kindle. Not to mention the demon cat swinging from the Christmas tree. Yes, it's that time of year [...]
Glimmer-Realms and Echoes Halloween, or rather All Hallows Eve is the gateway into the other side. The place we cannot go until it's our time to pass, and then can never return––except by shadow-visit or brief haunting glimpse. That chill whisper down a windy tunnel as you wait for a night train. The white shape floating at the edge of your vision. Hints and hunches. The cold warning tingle running down your back. All are echoes and glimmers of that [...]
Some Clarity On Corin's Journey Through The Decades It started back in 2001, (actually before then - but we'll commence with that year, the first of this hazy millennium.) Corin was around somewhere, his faint outline scribbled on biro, sometimes pencil, along with maps of his world - the continuously evolving Ansu. Back then, Corin was just a mournful dude walking through a wood at night, strange creepy things following, and owls and stuff - always owls and stuff. I [...]
A Tale of Witchery, Enchantment and loss Today I want to shed a little extra light on the new release-- The Emerald Queen, which is now available for purchase as an eBook on Amazon.com and .co.uk and will be available with other retailers soon, and as a paperback. I've also got a taster at the end of this post. Okay- So what's this one about? Legends of Ansu #7 is a tale of entanglement and deception, war and treachery. Seven years have [...]
A Taste of what's come... My new novel The Emerald Queen will be available in two weeks. With that in mind I decided to divert from my usual fantasy/myth subjects, and share a snippet from the new book. And, there's more coming... The next book in the series, The Legends of the Longsword, will be available on January 10th––so I'll be sharing a scene from that one in a few weeks. Book 2 in the new Mercenary Trilogy stars Corin [...]
And Celtic Dreams I used to drive a milk tanker at night, and through early mornings, leave the depot on Bodmin Moor in a veil of mist and murk, drive for two hours until I reached the rugged lands surrounding Lands End, and St Michael's Mount (Pictured below.) A different life, a distant time. Driving through that land was like dipping your toes in another realm. The dairies were remote, tucked away in deep forgotten corners. Old granite farmhouses that have [...]
Another Time, Another Place... Those words come from an art piece featuring The Rolling Stones by Rodney Matthews whose stunning work can be viewed from his new website here For me the words also convey a deeper mood, a memory of a time, quite recent –– yet so very long ago. I'm talking about the 1970's. No cellphones, no wi-fi, and no emails or blogs like this one. Truly... 'Another Time, Another Place.' As a teenager back then, and an avid [...]
