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What sort of writer am I? Take DH Lawrence’s sensuality and sensitivity, mix in a big dollop of John Steinbeck's earthy humor and truth, spice with a dash of Joyce's inventiveness and bawdyness. Sprinkle in a spot of Becket's radical originality. Cook in a slow simmering cauldron over an Irish peat fire given extra heat by the Scots/Irish hard burning coal and dish up in a new bowl of non-conformist Belfast manufacture. That's me. Modest too. I know these are big names to live up to but I try.
Bio, how boring?
Once upon a time, long a go, in a strangely beautiful green land, there was an industrial city. Forged from ships and linen, it sat uncomfortably in an otherwise rural land. It came to dominate and it grew a breed of men hard in their certainties and fears. No surrender types full of non-conformist rebellion. Militaristic people; troublesome to their neighbours and English masters.
Into that cultural cauldron I was born unplanned and unwanted like so many post war children. Duty and doing the right thing kept the parents who made us, miserabley together. I quickly found escape in literature, comics and the part work: Knowledge.
Library's and the countryside became my church and my priests were Steinbeck, Conrad, Hemingway and Joyce. School was torture for the hyper intelligent boy and Dyslexia was: "You're thick and stupid boy."
The troubles erupted and tribal sectarian violence ripped and tore. I stayed untill I could bear it no longer, then left to see the world and wander. I never went back to my dark home city but came south to Cork where I felt easy and only a little foreign.
My soul mate found, I searched for release from the agonies of all the wrong jobs and found it in novels. Twelve so far and more bubbling in me waiting.
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