About

Matt here.

I’m an English teacher living in Zaragoza, Spain, and I write SF in my spare time. The material I write is a blend of SF, autobiography, absurdism and shamelessly, unapologetically puerile humour.

The best thing about writing is that you come face-to-face with who you are as a person. That’s a pretty important thing to think about.

The second-best thing is watching people smile as they read through your pages.

I’m into kung fu, tai chi, reading, gaming and music. I’m also into my friends in a big way. I am blessed to have some genuinely amazing people in my life.

What started me writing was a stretch of time in hospital, watching on helplessly while a very special person faded away. One of those things that nothing and nobody can prepare you for.

Sitting there with nothing to do but wait, I thought about my childhood and remembered how much I loved drawing comic strips and writing stories at my granny’s house in Whitley Bay, around the time I would save money from my paper round and spend it on Fighting Fantasy books, Citadel Miniatures and Terry’s Pyramints, and thought The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy was the best thing ever. (This was before Red Dwarf started).

In that hospital, I knew I was going to make a big change in my life soon. And I decided to start writing.

ABOUT ME

publications

Looking for a long list of publications? Wrong place.

After that day in the hospital, I started writing flash fiction. I wrote and wrote and wrote and I remember the buzz of sending off 1000-word stories. I remember sending off a story called Ashima Gone Babylon and I got a reply saying "yes, we'll publish this." Wow. What a feeling that was.

Precisely 5 (five) successful flash fiction publications later, I realised I had enough ideas to fill a novel. So, for better or for worse, the flash fiction enterprise got ditched. Perhaps I should've spent longer doing it. I don't know. It got my back up slightly that there were sites that turned me down every time I sent them a story. (Every time?) Either way, seven years later, I've got one abandoned—and one complete—novel on my hands. The complete one is called We Are The Ululating Tzatziki. And it's every bit as sensible as it sounds.

Seven years sounds like a long time to produce a grand total of 1 (one) unpublished novel. It is. But take into account that I had to learn the hard way how to write a novel while I was writing it, and make all the mistakes that I needed to make along the way (plus a bucketload more that I didn't need to make, but I did anyway, just because I could.)

Amongst all this: tales of angst and addiction, family matters, changing careers mid-race (twice), adaptation to life in Spain, opening an ESL academy, meeting there some of the nicest people I've ever met—and because it's pathologically impossible for me not to mention it at least once at every opportunity—plenty of kung fu.