Jack Stockley

First the boring stuff: I was born in the UK (Lancashire to be more accurate) in the mid 1960s, but grew up in Scotland (Caithness to be precise). I studied mathematics at Aberdeen University and emigrated to Australia in 1989. I have lived in Sydney since 1992.

My path to becoming a writer of fantasy is probably pretty standard, at least in the overall pattern, if not the details. I cannot remember a time when I was not an avid reader. When young I loved the Jennings books of Anthony Buckridge and Frank Richards' Billy Bunter. Both series were set in worlds far removed from the far north of Scotland in the 1970s, and I bet they are even further removed from reality now.

I was also keen on science fiction, history and mythology. My first real memory of fantasy, as opposed to fairy tales, is of my primary school teacher reading us Alan Garner's Elidor when I was 9 or 10. I was and remain keenly interested in science fiction, especially Dr Who, but have never had an urge to write some. Maybe that will change if I ever have an idea I feel like pursuing.

At some time in the mid 1970s I acquired J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit from a older cousin, although I remember finding it hard to get into at first. From then, fantasy, especially high fantasy, became an abiding interest. I must have read The Lord of the Rings a dozen times since I first read it at about 13 or 14, and all the associated work of Tolkein's as that came out. Of course, I got deeply into D&D when that became popular in the late 1970s as well.

The basic ideas of my first novel, Famous By My Sword, came about as back story in an AD&D campaign I started to flesh out in the mid 1980s, but never really played. Those who played D&D and read Famous will see these antecedents, but it evolved a long way from my primordial ideas.

My writing languished for a long time after I moved to Australia, although I did manage to start work on a second novel The Cure of All Diseases, which also languished for at least a decade, but is now completed too. A fast writer I am not.

Why do I write? The only explanation I can really give borrows from something from Carpenter's biography of Tolkein that always stuck in my mind: C.S. Lewis was reported as lamenting there was 'too little of what we really like in stories' and concluded that 'we shall have to write some ourselves.' Tolkein agreed, and so they did.

In the end I think I took Famous and Cure up again in the mid 2000s not just for my own amusement, but in order to see if I could actually finish them to my own satisfaction, and write something where what happens, happens logically. If anyone else likes anything I write, that's an unlooked for bonus.

Jack Stockley is a nom-de-plume.