To date I have written and published twelve books, comprising double novellas, short story collections and novels which I am hoping will allow me to cater to readers' preferences while allowing best choice of format for whatever idea has caught my attention.
In my youth there were so many great authors. Whenever I hit the road bound for nowhere in particular and looking for adventure, my travel bag always contained at least one novel of a favourite author. Reading offered a respite on a particularly long journey as I paused to rest, perhaps on a deserted coastline or under the shade of a tree, somewhere many miles from nowhere and a long way from home.
The stories I offer in part pay homage to the great authors who sparked my imagination, and they serve as a means to convey what knowledge I've acquired over years of exploration. Writers such as Arthur Miller, Arthur C. Clarke, Brian Aldiss, Harlan Ellison and others all possessed the ability to transport a reader to other worlds, into situations and surroundings far beyond the everyday: a conjuring trick of great vision and skill which I hoped one day to emulate.
Life, although being incredibly harsh and unpredictable at times, there is, I have discovered underlying it all, a discernible pattern leading to greater understanding. If one attempts to unravel the mysteries woven within the master tapestry by tugging at an exposed thread, hidden truths and insights often emerge, beginning the process of understanding while revealing the grand, complex and so intricate design.
There is, I think, a kind of universal justice underlying it all, and although as human beings we are privy to only a small part of it, as far as I am concerned, without the enduring mysteries which constitute the whole, life would be so much less the challenge that it is. So much less enjoyable, rewarding and fascinating, therefore.
It may surprise some to know that much of what is described within my stories as fiction, is anything but that. It’s true, the notion of truth being much stranger than fiction. I could not possibly have invented some of what is related in some of my stories, and so curious are a few events I experienced, I felt compelled to tell of them, sometimes woven into a novel, occasionally focused upon in a short story or novella form. Whatever you make of these offerings, I hope you enjoy and gain something positive from them. I’m about adventured out, at my age, and must today search in other directions for raw material, but here's nothing confining in that. The greatest adventures of all can lie within the imagination. For now, I’m taking a break from scribbling, waiting for the next bout of inspiration to strike, hoping to discover and tap into new, unexplored reserves within the unpredictable, often surprising and occasionally murky depths of the human psyche.
Thomas James Taylor
AUTHOR
