About Me
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3 Comments
My name is Aaron, and I'm a thirty-something-year-old Londoner.
I've written a few books: short story collections Removed Without Warning and Everything Around Me is Destroyed or Damaged, and my novel Gods and Conquerors, in which I proposed to my girlfriend (she said yes). Gods and Conquerors tells the story of four people sent to a planet known to be inhabited by intelligent life, only to find the planet a smoking wasteland when they arrive. Give it a read, you know you want to.
When I read (which I can, you know), I try to be as open-minded as possible, but I tend to prefer literary fiction - serious novels, with deep meanings and pretentious turns of phrase. Add me on Goodreads to see my most favouritest books ever.
I love programming even though I'm not very good at it, and gaming even though I don't really have time to do much of it these days. Other things I love include tattoos, cats and my vegetable patch.
Please note that links to Amazon on this site are likely to be Amazon affiliate links. This simply means that if you click these links and buy something, I get a small cut for sending you there.
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ReplyDeleteHi Kieran!
ReplyDeleteI'm glad you found your way here, and even more glad you're enjoying it. I had, in fact, forgotten that I'd ever written Thoughts of a Twenty-First Century Bachelor, and now that I've reread it I'm really regretting not putting in my book. Ah well, maybe next time.
I've always written for fun, but I really got into it at university, when I'd read pretty much every Chuck Palahniuk and Bret Easton Ellis book in the space of a few months and was inspired to start writing again. I haven't had any training, but I've heard that creative writing courses are really worth going on. I guess I just don't have the time or money to invest in them.
My advice would be - and this might sound clichéd, but it's true - to keep writing and keep reading, whenever you find time. The more you read and the more you write, pissing about with all sorts of styles and genres, the better you'll become, almost by accident. Also, blogging has helped me. As did taking part in www.thethemeis.co.uk, where a group of friends and I challenged ourselves to write a story every two weeks for a year on a particular theme. In fact, we're starting to do that again, but more casually this time, so if you want to join in, please do. The more, the merrier.
I'm also subscribed to Writing magazine, which isn't really a necessity, as I don't find it as inspiring as some people do; and I love Twitter, because it enables me to read the minds of a shitload of literary agents and authors and who knows who else, 24x7.
Hope this helps!
I have somehow managed to delete my comment. Sorry about that.
ReplyDeleteThat is all sound advice. Now I have finished uni I can concentrate on reading more. I had a blockage at first, probably due to 4 years of academic pressure.
I have looked at writing magazines before and wasn't overly impressed. I much prefer speaking to people or reading their own take on things. There are a lot of sites dedicated to authors I like. I have read a lot of Bukowski, Kerouac, Orwell, Kafka, Ballard, and I also like to go through books that I have heard and referenced but never read. I have covered the Romantics, modernism and postmodernism, Queer theory and other topics in Victorian literature, and all sorts of other things.
I will definitely have a look at that site, it sounds like a challenge which could help me a lot.
Thanks again for the reply.