Some time in the dim and distant past (a couple of years ago to be precise) I took the plunge and let a few friends see some of my stories. Their reaction was encouraging enough for me to post a couple on the net (under the nom de porn of "Mark Smith") for the whole wide world to see.
I received enough complimentary emails to make my ego purr nicely, but somewhere along the line I lost all confidence in my writing to the extent that in June 2002 I destroyed all computer and paper copies of everything I had ever written.
Since then my self-confidence has slowly recovered and I'm just at the stage of putting fingers to keyboard again. While I'm working on a couple of new things, I'm re-posting - under my real name! - those first couple of stories. I've been able to recover them from cyberspace with the assistance of www.google.com!
Please let me know what you think of them - we authors thrive on feedback, be it good, bad or ugly. It's simple - all you have to do is email me and tell me the worst.
Tie Me Up And Spank Me
A short, silly piece intended to make the reader
laugh.
The emails I received seems to indicate that
it worked, but I'm not confident enough to officially proclaim it
"humorous".
I Love Her So Much
A darker piece this time, about love, jealousy and
despair. Not recommended if you're looking for something to cheer you up.
Selena Jardine, who won't remember me or understand why she inspired me to start writing again!
I emailed Selena to praise her Wonderful story "Ruthie's Hair" and her friendly reply, emphasising the importance of feedback to authors, somehow encouraged me to have another go at this writing business.
You can read all of Selena's stories at her ASSTR website. Alternatively, you can email her to blame her for making me write again!
This page has been put together pretty quickly. I'm scared that if I get too involved in designing it I'll get distracted from writing.
I'm competent enough at creating pages (I hope), but quite thoroughly useless at designing a good looking site. If you have any ideas or suggestions for me to make the site better looking or more user-friendly, then please email me.