I write.

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I enjoy it and it keeps me sane; important as I am a recluse diagnosed with a strange mind. It makes life particularly colourful at times, a rare insight into the OtherWorlde perhaps. I like to think so. Originally my writing focussed on dark tales, but in 2016 I believe I 'found' my writing-self when I penned the short story 'Magpie'. In it I played with the idea of there being another place, where hope and other powers existed; of nature and magick. And so my writing took me into a world of Fae, folklore, fantasy, and fairy tale. 

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In 2018 I published 'Nightjar', my first novel, in a voice I found my characters using. Here arose a dystopian tale of a feudal future, with Roman roads, Celtic hillforts, creatures old as time, and an exploration of love. Recipient of many excellent reviews, it's proving popular with authors and readers alike. This was followed, later in 2018, by the release of '76 and the Odd 93'. This novel is a reworking of a dark piece I started twenty-five years earlier that explores the effects of child abuse on the psyche of a young boy and the creation of something evil. Although fictional, it is a dive into mental illness, religious dogma, and the warping of reality that draws on some of my own experiences as a child victim of severe mental, physical and emotional abuse. In 2020 the Pandemic. This changed life for us all.

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With lockdown and time on my hands, the world spiralling, I penned 'Life of Maggot'. An experimental, allegorical work, it takes the style of a medieval hymnal or prayer book. Structured about medieval images and the Apocryphal Horsemen, it simultaneously explores the end of the world juxtaposed against the magick of nature through the eyes of a child. I love this piece, even though poetic, bleak and strange in the telling. As of 2021, I have been working on a couple of pieces, though my main WIP -started in 2023 - is something of an epic piece of fantasy.

 

Other odds and sods about me are that I really am a recluse, do suffer from a number of mental illnesses, and used to be a musician. Writing is my medicine, my mainstay, my life, and I write from out a shed (with Bilbo Black Cat ever at my side). Ignorant of rules, my style is certainly strange, poetic, and slap bang in the middle of Speculative Fiction, and some have said it might not be to the taste of everyone. I think that's fair. 

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But those who do enjoy my work seem to love it.

And for that I am eternally grateful.

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Paul Jameson

(November, 2023)