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Author's biography

​(Steve Fitzsimmons interviewed by Wordthug)

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Wordthug: You're a hardcore reader by all accounts?

Me: I became a book junkie as soon I was old enough to use my new-found reading skills for pleasure. My earliest hardback memories are a jumble of the Ladybird and Observer series and Winston Churchill’s My Early Life  autobiography (which also taught me how to use a dictionary). The Look and Learn and National Geographic magazines were a magnet for me, as were the short stories in my mother’s Tit-Bits variety weekly. I can clearly remember some of the plots when we were snowed in during the 1962/63 Big Freeze and the only entertainment was reading and listening to a radio. Ever since then, put me anywhere, or in any situation, and I’ll never be bored as long as I’ve got words. I’ve read literally thousands of books of all genres  and learned something from all of them, whether wonderful, indifferent or Not Very Good.

Wordthug: How did you get to where you are today.

Me: I left school at 15 with nothing but a big spring in my step and an even bigger grin.

English was my best subject and, other than art and metalwork, I couldn’t be bothered with anything else. I’ve forgotten everything about adverbs, auxiliary verbs, declensions, subordinating conjunctions, reflexive pronouns, present participles, relative clauses and all that grammatical mumbo-jumbo, but a driver doesn’t need to know about ignition timing, camshaft lobe profiles, fuel injection or compression ratios to pop down to the shop for a newspaper and pint of milk. I know how, but not why, the language works, which is good enough for me.

In those days, it wasn’t difficult to get a job without qualifications and I eventually ended up as a licenced aircraft engineer via several employment detours and hard self-study. So much for the school careers officer telling me I was going nowhere without O Levels. He was wrong in both meanings ... I was in Africa when I first put think to ink on that Sunday morning in 2000 and many of the subsequent stories were inspired by my life experiences from many angles. 

I’ve been retired since 2020 and have a part time job at a motor sport venue to keep me active, if not rich.

Wordthug: What do you write about?

Me: Anything. I’m not tied to any particular genre or writing style. An idea can be inspired by something I’ve seen or heard, flashes of past experiences or the remnants of dreams that have disappeared into my mental recycle bin. I like to go from bathos to pathos, triumph to tragedy and levity to gravity as a contrast to whatever my last piece of writing was.

Wordthug: So why did you  self-publish a book on Amazon KDP?

Me: The traditional publishing route isn’t receptive to short story collections unless they’re by a well-known writer, so KDP was my only channel to print. I’ve lost count of the submissions I’ve made to agents and most have been ignored. The one positive response I received was that they enjoyed my work but, in their experience, only themed collections were marketable. Fair enough, they’re in the business to make money. As I said earlier, I’m a fan of short stories and, depending on the day, often prefer them to novels. If I’m travelling by air, sea or coach, they’re more likely to keep my attention focussed. A short story writer has got to work hard to condense his/her meaning into a few thousand words and if he/she hasn’t grabbed the reader in the opening page, they’ve blown it.

Wordthug: What do you think makes or breaks a story from the outset?

Me: The passive voice, mainly. It suggests a lack of confidence in the writing or the characters.

Wordthug: What do you mean by ‘passive voice?

Me. Passive voice = Going to the door, I put on my jacket and went into the garden.

Active voice = I put my jacket on and went into the garden.

Passive voice: Writing on the blackboard, the teacher demonstrated the formula.

Active voice: The teacher demonstrated the formula on the blackboard.

Passive voice = My car was bought by a neighbour.

Active voice = A neighbour bought my car.

It’s a subtle word order change but alters the dynamics. I might not be an expert writer but I think I can claim to be an expert reader after trawling through thousands of books over the past 60 or so years. If a story starts with the passive voice, I’ll  probably stop reading. It’s easily fixed once the writer gets into the mindset. I once paid for a professional appraisal of my writing and read one of the critiquer’s short story collections while waiting for the report. I was surprised to find that he was thoroughly guilty of the passive voice as well as ‘deep’ purple prose, despite a Creative Writing qualification. No credibility, no listen, bwana!

Wordthug: What’s purple prose?

Me: Flowery writing. Writers using needlessly long sentences, elaborate words or phrases and extravagant descriptions to impress their readers rather than keeping it simple and tight.

Wordthug: Give me an example.

Me: Okay, something like this:

 

I wended my way through the multitudes going about their business in the tree-lined thoroughfare. Once I espied the premises of Catlick and Sprogforth, Solicitors, I ascended the steps, opened the green door and followed the plushly-carpeted passageway to a sign marked Reception. A slim young woman with curly red hair sitting behind a large computer screen enquired as to my needs. Once she had ascertained the reason for my visit, she announced my arrival to Mr Catlick through the intercom and directed me to his office.

He bade me enter upon hearing my knock on his door. I was confronted by a grey-haired  man of ample proportions clad in an expensive blue pin-striped suit, pink shirt and vermilion tie reclining on a luxurious leather chair behind a vast oak desk.

He rose and greeted me with a firm shake of the hand. ‘Ah, Mr Pylock! How can I be of service to you?’

 

It could be condensed into something like this and lose nothing in translation:

 

I pushed my way through the lunchtime crowds and found the office of Catlick & Sprogforth, Solicitors. The secretary took my details, called Catlick on the interphone and pointed me to his office. I knocked on the door and went in.

‘Good day, Mr Pylock. What can I do for you?’ The accent matched his Savile Row suit.

 

Wordthug: Just as well you don’t get paid by the wordcount. Which writers do you admire?

Me: For short stories and full-length books: Roald Dahl and Ernest Hemingway (both with some reservations), Ambrose Bierce, Basil Copper, Len Deighton, Alistair MacClean, Gerald Hanley, JP Mallalieu, Frederick Forsyth, Nicholas Monsarrat, Raymond Chandler, Joseph Heller, Joseph Conrad, Ernest K Gann, Charles Dickens, Jack London, George Orwell, Aldous Huxley and Laura Hird. I imagine many younger readers have never heard of most of them.

Wordthug: I haven’t either. What are your favourite short stories?

Me: The first ones that come to mind are Ambrose Bierce’s Incident at Owl Creek, Basil Copper’s Camera Obscura, Jack London’s To Build a Fire, Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery and W Jacobs’ The Monkey’s Paw.

Wordthug: So, what’s your publishing history?

Me: I had two 30,000-word collections published in chapbook form by a small publisher in 2003 (Quick Shorts for Fast Travellers and Science Quicktion). I made the usual novice mistakes and when they went out of print, I recycled most of them into improved versions. I’ve had an article on 100 Years of Powered flight published in Air Botswana’s inflight magazine and several inclusions in various anthologies. Here and There, This and That is a 60,000-word collection published by Amazon and I’m presently editing another short story collection for release in 2026. I’m also 30,000 words into a novel called A Sieve for a Sky, which is getting a bit dusty at the moment.

I reckon that’ll do for the moment. How about a beer break?

Wordthug: Well, if you’re buying! It is more blessed to give than receive. (Acts 20:35)