About Martin

Martin writes SFF fiction, mostly post-apocalyptic or post-collapse novels & short stories but they’re also explorations of how Britons might rebuild our country and culture after the real collapse that’s surely imminent.

I’m hoping enough readers enjoy, are inspired by and support my work that one day I can go fulltime, hopefully before the ground floor of psych nursing is crushed. That will happen when the immense weight of floors and floors of managers, empire builders, frauds, parasites and assorted muppets above collapses on top of us.

Let me introduce myself

I’ve served 37 years and counting as a front-line, coal face mental nurse.

I tinkered with writing fiction for 25 + years before I clicked I would never know if I had what it takes unless I threw myself in the deep end and committed to it.

I was living in New Zealand at the time. Joseph Campbell wrote, (about risk-taking, living authentically, adventure, making no-going-back decisions) ‘Jump. It’s not as wide as you think.’ I bought a campervan, resigned my fulltime job (whew), went on the road. I finished novel 1, then novella 2. I knew I could do it after that. But I could have chickened out and spent the rest of my life wondering what might have been. Praise the Lord I didn’t.

The first novel is set in post-apocalyptic England. So are the second and third. And fifth. And probably half of my short stories too. Only a fraction are dystopian. The majority travel down a different track, passing stations I’d call hopeful, successful, marginal, better, sustainable, disastrous, unforeseeable, exploratory, rewarding and bittersweet, taking their characters on journeys that will challenge and change them for better, worse or ‘how the hell did that happen to me?’ I love a reluctant hero and seeing the self-righteous punctured.

I’ve learned that my stories are the canvas on which I explore these themes; true manhood and masculinity, true leadership, honour, integrity, the search for truth, the nature and exercise of power, how societies develop, work, don’t work, crumble and collapse, how economies really work, the battle of the sexes, mental illness and disorders — the list continues to grow. Until I read them back, I never knew most of these were in my stories.

Among my favourite authors are Ursula Le Guin, George Pelecanos, Robert Silverberg, Philip Jose Farmer, R.L. Stevenson, Jack London, Anton Chekhov, C.S. Lewis, Elmore Leonard, Bosch period Michael Connelly, Kurt Vonnegut, John D MacDonald’s Travis McGee series and Donald Westlake’s Parker series.

Best books or short stories ever – so far. A wizard of Earthsea, Majipoor Chronicles, Station Eleven, The Hobbit, Up the line, The Magus, To your scattered bodies go, The death of grass, Treasure Island, Tenth of December, Hawksbill Station, The thin man, A defenceless creature (Chekhov), Sacks (Raymond Carver), Escape from Spiderhead, Nine Lives, FUBAR, Kill Switch (Willie Vlautin), ‘Now + n, Now – n’, Jenny, Girl Pool, The three strangers (Thomas Hardy), The Road (Silverberg), On the high marshes, Four ways to forgiveness, The man who came early. I’d better stop listing now. One day I’ll review these on the website.

Go to 'Books'

I used to be an ex-pat Brit living in NZ but am now back in Blighty. Divorced father of two inspiring sons. Mental nurse. INTP. Mad about Notts County, Prog Rock, anything guitar and the Great Outdoors. Books, maps and cinema. And real ale. And redheads. And…well perhaps that’s enough for now!

Things that drive me and my writing. You readers.

A. I’m a novelist, screenwriter and short-story writer. My aim is to both entertain and stir my readers, encourage and inspire them, challenge and provoke them with difficult questions, ideas and solutions. I want to force you to keep on turning the pages because you can’t wait to find out what happens next to my heroes & villains, how they tackle the dilemmas they find themselves in. I want you to love exploring the worlds my characters live in.

B. And I want my readers to know there is someone who can express what they are secretly feeling and know they are not alone.

I write for the readers I hold in my head. One is a man who isn’t sure life is worth it anymore, who has lost so much he’s just managing to struggle and stumble up the steep, rocky path of life. He may have had his masculinity stolen or beaten or shamed out of him. I’m writing for the woman who recognises that condition in the man she loves and who desperately wants her sons to be spared it. I’m writing for all those ‘hanging on in quiet desperation,’ for men and women who mourn the England that’s been robbed from us and long and pray for her restoration.

Things that drive me and my writing. Settings and themes.

C. So I use the post-collapse landscape in a majority of stories. It’s such a generous canvas with huge potential for exploring alternative ways of living, how the collapse unfolded, how civilisation was lost. Terry Nation’ Survivors, The Scarlet Plague, The Stand and Z for Zachariah show the huge breadth of possibilities. (And scenarios that are as good as post-apocalyptic, where all the supports and structures of civilisation are gone e.g. ‘Lord of the Flies’, ‘The Dome’) This landscape also allows me to explore how people addicted to their index linked lives might cope (or not) when everything flies away. (E.g. ‘And all things nice’) And, for the reader I described above, it’s a place that men can be men again, where masculinity is once more not only desirable but essential, critical even, where males need to step up, and quickly, take a concrete pill and become men, become heroes who bring order from chaos. (See ‘Jacksboro Highway,’ ‘Shangri-La,’ ‘Two tribes,’ ‘Entire and whole and perfect’ ‘Nasty, brutish and short’, ‘And a star to steer her by’ and more.)

And be quite certain, Britain is well on her way there, to a post-collapse future, at full speed, heading for the cliff edge with a blinkered maniac who can’t read a map at the throttle.

Themes

D. Themes. Now themes aren’t what you probably think they are, i.e. something an author starts out with, in his head, before he even adds a word to the blank page. It isn’t. It’s something in the treasure store of your unconscious mind that wants to get out into the world, onto a page or canvas, into a song, musical composition or a dance creation, in the form of a business venture, a political movement – well, there are many outlets. Mine is through fiction.

Steven Pressfield, an author (try ’36 righteous men’ or ‘Man at arms’) and writing coach (my inadequate description for what he does,) writes,

‘It is very, very hard to figure out your theme. It’s back-breaking, brain-busting labor. Resistance becomes monumental. Even Paddy Chayefsky had to struggle. (Note how he says, “Once I figure out the theme.’)

NB Paddy Chayefsky is the only three-time, solo, Oscar winner for best screenplay.

So, given that I don’t always know what my theme is until I’m well into the story and not always then, here goes with my rough list.

1. The complacent, lazy, almost entitled view, (except entitlement takes more mental effort to achieve than this idle, unexamined zephyr of an idea) that everything great and enduring and precious that Britons have dropped effortlessly out of the sky into our laps and no matter how careless and slack handed we are with them, they could never, ever be lost or broken beyond repair.

2. The power of women’s love, encouragement, the release of masculine strength and leadership it can liberate (‘The start of the world,’ ‘Jacksboro Highway’) – or strangle when withheld (Comfort of strangers).

3. Soft power, secret power, women’s power. (‘Iraa and the five stories’)

4. What the world would really look like when man-hating feminists or progressives remove men, the armed forces and law and order from it.

5. Mental illness and ways to understand it, live with it, prevent it, help the people suffering it. (Siggi’s story, Borderline building, Munchausen’s mother, The things you gave your life to, broken.)

6. Criminals are not fluffy, misunderstood little lambs who only need understanding and more benefits. They are red in tooth and claw predators who will shred everything you have and hold dear if permitted. And laugh. Quoting Nightjack

“They just want to get high, shag your 14 year old daughter until she is pregnant and nick your stuff.”

And that’s just the ones with limited imaginations.

7. Men and masculinity are essential for a successful civilisation, for families and children, for defence, for law and order, for a functioning, burgeoning economy. For science, the arts, for everything - and when it’s gone, taking everything civilisation has along with it, we will all regret, with weeping and gnashing of teeth, allowing the forces of darkness to drive it away.