My long and twisted road to writing

I don’t really know when the urge to write first took me over. It probably started in my schooldays in Ireland. One of my earliest memories is of my mother telling me  my infant school teacher had predicted that I would probably be a writer when I grew up. I can’t remember what evidence she used, to base her opinion on. I must have been a very imaginative child or (more likely) very good at making up inventive excuses for not doing my homework. Anyway, when I did start writing professionally a few years ago, I felt I was paying tribute to her faith in me by making her prediction come true. If she’s watching me from Heaven, I hope she remembers me.

I suppose really, before I got into creating my own stories, I was inspired by reading all the great classics of literature. Our house was well furnished with books, due to my elder brother being an avid reader, so I had ploughed my way through the works of Charles Dickens, Alexandre Dumas, the Brontes etc before my tenth birthday. This gave me a definite appreciation of good stories and showed me a world far away from the chickens and cows that constituted my rural living experience in Ireland.

Another thing from my schooldays was, that when most of my fellows were writing boring “Janet and John” type essays, I would often present the teachers with stories based on the adventures I was reading. The heroes of my homework efforts would be living on desert islands, or be musketeers or astronauts. The teachers would sometimes get me to read my stories to the class. That rarely happened with the other pupils and it gave me a great sense of pride. I was a bit of a smartass kid though and sometimes shocked my mentors. In Ireland, everybody had to learn the Irish language at school. For most it was a chore to be endured, but I was quite good at it. I must have had a talent for languages. Anyway I found out the Irish words for such embarrassing things as sex or making love and I would occasionally write mildly erotic essays. Because I was top of the class and my grammar was always impeccable, the poor teachers could do nothing except blush a lot. I thought that was really funny.

I moved away from writing after I left school. The necessity to just earn a living propelled me into a variety of jobs, from cooking in a diner to working in a margarine factory, and eventually I found myself living in England and working on the railway. I did still read a lot but never put pen to paper. It seemed like my old teacher was not such a talented prophetess after all. Then I found myself retired, (or sacked depending on whether you look at it from mine or my boss’s point of view), and everything changed again. I was fifty odd and needed to make a living in a world where there was not any great prospects for someone of my age. Self-employment seemed the only option and it was down that route I went.

My first venture was to revisit an old hobby of mine and try to make some money from it. One of my party pieces was reading hands and I was always in demand from girls, who wanted to find out if their boyfriends would marry them, or guys who wanted to know if they were likely to be successful in business. It was a perfect way of getting free drinks in bars and stood me in great stead over the years. Anyway I decided, since we were now in the computer age, to build a website and get people to send me pictures of their hands so that I could do the readings. Payment would be by PayPal. I started a palmistry blog also and wrote some short stories about people, who had had their lives turned round as a result of getting a handreading. I did get some customers, but not too many and after a while I realised that the amount of work involved in online handreading meant that it could never be a viable money-spinner. I realised at the same time that I was really enjoying writing the stories I was using as advertising and some of them were pretty good. Consequently the palmistry was binned and I started writing articles and tales on a site called HubPages. You can read some of them by following this link

http://christopheranton.hubpages.com/

You may find quite a few comic or satirical stories among the collection. I’ve always enjoyed making people laugh so, when I finally got round to publishing my first book, it was a satirical comedy called “The Zombie, the Cat, and Barack Obama”. I was fortunate to get some very good reviews, so am reasonably confident that my readers like my work. The Amazon. com link to the book is here.

http://goo.gl/fifV3U

More recently I’ve published “Stories from the Life of Jesus by His Mother” which has also been quite well received. This is a generally light hearted account of the life of Jesus. It may have been written by His Mother Mary, or by me. You need to wait until you go to Heaven, to find out the truth there. The Amazon.com link for buying the book is here.

http://goo.gl/J2X25D

That’s my story so far. I’ve got little idea what the future may bring. Hopefully there might be a few more books.