This is all background stuff, the blogs are under the HOME tab,

There’s a mailing list link on the right – you get a free Lawns story for signing up, and fairly regular emails about forthcoming books, special deals, promotions, and freebies as and when. Not very often, but if you do get sick of me, just unsubscribe.  That’ll teach me not to be boring.  and it isn’t one-way traffic, either, I’d love to hear back from you. Really. Writing a book is a bit like starting a correspondence with a stranger who takes months to respond, if at all. Blogging on this website’s home page, exchanging jokes on my FB pages for EJ Lamprey, Clarissa Rodgers-Briskleigh and Joanna Lamprey , and chatting on Twitter @Elegsabiff, is great when it gets interactive – or email me direct on elegsabifff@gmail.com.

That background stuff – when the world didn’t end on 31st December 1999,  I moved to Scotland and started a new life – for me, the past really is another country.

When the world didn’t end on 21st December 2012 I dug out a favourite manuscript and epublished on Kindle on January first, writing as E J Lamprey – One Two Buckle My Shoe.  That was  followed on April Fools day, 2013, with Three Four Knock On My Door – I can’t be the only writer who, while tidying up loose ends on one book, is constantly nagged and poked by insistent  ideas for a second one?  And third – well,  the series is now done, Nineteen Twenty My Plate Is Empty  (Kindle and paperback) went live a few months ago. . The whodunits are all novellas, ideal weekend or holiday reading, although Eleven Twelve Dig And Delve is a cross-genre story, called the Halloween edition for good reason, and published, with minutes to spare, on 31st October. In the meantime I also brought out two novellas under the name Joanna Lamprey, Time After Time and No Place Like Place. Those don’t have clickable covers in the margin because the margin is really rather crowded already – there is a Joanna Lamprey tab, with clickable links. Space also had to be found for the last venture because although it is a romp, it’s also a subject close to my heart, the delights and perils of making the most of the Indian summer age I blog about all the time. Specifically, being older, single, and venturing into a world of older singles. A Second Rainbow is entirely unlike the others, and to underline that I’ve used the tongue-in-cheek writer name of Clarissa Rodgers-Briskleigh. It isn’t autobiographical, most second-timers will recognize at least one of the characters who are all drawn from type, albeit exaggerated to fit into the sub-theme from Baum’s Wonderful Wizard of Oz. All the writer names have their own tabs.

So when is the next world-ending event due? They’re interesting.

 

The last upheaval in my life wasn’t caused by a world-ending event but far more prosaically by redundancy: the company I was working for closed its Scottish offices to operate solely from the English head office. Talk about deja vu – I originally moved to Scotland because the company I was working for in England closed its English office to operate solely from their Scottish head office. History was reversing itself, to the point where I could have returned to England, at the company’s expense (in two year chains, of course).

Instead I went slightly mad (or completely mad, depending on your point of view) and moved to Spain.

I am but mad north-north-west: when the wind is southerly I know a hawk from a handsaw.  There was a bonkers logic to the whole thing. Staying in Scotland without a job, with a mortgage which stretched some 9 years into the future, wasn’t appealing. Moving to an extremely expensive part of England to either rent or shoulder a far bigger mortgage wasn’t remotely appealing.

Option three, selling the house, buying a decrepit but large townhouse for cash in a foreign country, tidying it up and hoping for a thin stream of paying guests to cover ongoing overheads, now you’re talking. There was, of course, the small matter of finding employment. My Spanish was pretty much limited to ordering coffee, even though by this time I had visited half a dozen times. The universe directed an email my way  which asked if I had ever considered training to teach English as a foreign language? I hadn’t – but how timely! I did my TEFL qualification online, secured a job with a Chinese online tutoring school, sold the house, packed up and moved, and now I teach 2 to 3 hours a day, have my thin trickle of paying guests, and occasionally find time to write. There’s a tab headed Spain which fills in the gaps.  The house itself is on the tab Casa Excéntrico, and also has a Facebook page. I’m aware the name should be excéntrica …

The most recent book is always the top one in the side-margin, click on the pic to be taken to Amazon for Kindle or paperback version. Some books and bundled books are on my Shop tab, for those who prefer not to contribute to Amazon’s tax-free income.

Oh, and listen – if you’d like to be a beta reader, or playing on the street team, let me know? Elegsabifff@gmail.com. The book nearest to completion at the moment is Pidgin Spanish but there is a thriller bubbling under, with so many twists and turns even I am bewildered, and another Joanna Lamprey is very slowly taking shape.  Life was at its simplest when I could write happily all day, surrounded by empty coffee cups, hair on end and in my PJs until time for the dog’s afternoon walk. Now she has to be walked twice a day, and housework has to be kept up to scratch as visitors can book with as little as 24 hours notice,  and I am on video with my pupils, and on view when I have guests, so the easy life of the hermit has gone. Possibly for the best, but I do miss the unlimited writing time …