|
|
|
| HOME | Atheism | Fiction |
HIV |
Opinion |
Gay World |
|
|
|
Shakespeare, for example. We know little about his life and we care less who really wrote his plays. To fully appreciate his work, an understanding of Elizabethan language, politics and social conditions are far more important than knowing who his wife was or why he willed her his second-best bed. But for contemporary writers the reader need only be a native or near-native speaker of the language and familiar with the setting to appreciate their work. The rest is irrelevant. Or is this rationalisation? Can we only fully appreciate authors if we know what they had for breakfast, who they smiled or growled at over the breakfast table and the details of their sex lives? Would you understand my fiction better if you knew everything about my childhood and my circle of friends? If that is the case, bad luck. You won't get such details from me. I keep my private life private for three reasons. Firstly, because I am essentially a private person; I am not interested in the lives of anyone other than family and friends and only want family and friends to be interested in mine. Secondly, I would think I had failed as a writer if you could only appreciate my writing through my personality and past. I prefer it to stand alone, to make its impact without any further help from me. Finally, we can never scratch far beneath the surface of strangers; we only view their personalities through the prism of our own; from the information I give you, you may think you glimpse my soul but all you will see is a distorted reflection of your own... That long preamble aside, here is some basic information to satisfy the curious: I was born in Scotland in the 1950s and lived in Edinburgh until graduating from university with a second-rate degree in linguistics. I then taught English as a second language for several years, in Greece, London and Brazil. During this period I wrote many, mostly forgettable, articles and short stories, mostly for gay magazines in the UK and US. Among them, a story published in January 1979 in the New York-based magazine Christopher Street about a gay man with an unknown, fatal disease without a cure. (AIDS first came to public notice in 1981.) In the mid-1980s I wrote regular reviews for the (gay) New York Native and was literary editor of the reincarnated UK Gay News. In 1986 I began a 20-year period specialising in the social causes and consequences of HIV/AIDS in the Developing World. [I have to thank Jon Tinker, founder of the Panos Institute, and the late Renee Sabatier for giving me the opportunity to enter this interesting and challenging field.] Most of my written work during this time was on this topic, but I also published my first novel Weekend, two collections of short stories, A Sense of Loss and First and Fiftieth, and the second novel The Butterfly's Wing during this time. That last title owes a great deal to the travel opportunities that Panos and other development organisations offered me. (My partner at the time and I also produced a play from one of my short stories - unfortunately a more amateur than professional production.) Always restless, I not only traveled widely but spent considerable time living abroad. 1994 to 1998 saw me in Los Angeles and, latterly, Brooklyn. 2003 - 2007 I spent mostly in Thailand. Work - understanding how people responded to HIV and helping them develop strategies for the people most affected - took me to Central and South America, much of Africa, South-East Asia, Papua New Guinea and beyond. Around 2006 I realised that while my empathy for those affected by AIDS remained undiminished, my intellectual enthusiasm for the subject had died. In that year I made the mistake of opening a business in Thailand. It was not my first commercial adventure - I had spent two years in the early 1990s running a condom retail and wholesale business in London - but it confirmed that I do not have the personality to run a company profitably. The mid-2000s also saw my interest in writing fiction come to an end. While Iwas becoming increasingly skilful as a writer, broadening my style and range of characters and situations and deepening my insights into the lives of those I wrote about, my sales continued to fall. The primary reason was my failure to break into the mainstream. Agents and publishers saw no commercial value in my work. People are unhappy in many of my stories, they despair, they observe death or they themselves die. A friend once complained that he had been so depressed by reading A Sense of Loss on the London underground that he had to go home instead of to the party he had been invited to. Agents and publishers are not encouraged by such reactions; real life is ok in fiction, but there should be an upbeat resolution at the end - a resolution I frequently failed to provide. In recent years, therefore, my attention has turned away from fiction to religion and the harm it does to the world. Much of my time is devoted to maintaining godwouldbeanatheist.com. I am also clearing out my extensive library and selling books online at Arbery Books. I still travel, but less frequently than before. I live in London again and am settling down with my long-term Thai partner. He says he prefers British cold to Bangkok heat, but let's see if he maintains that attitude after a year here... 
Custom Search
|
|