I’m an English ex-pat who’s been living in the Czech Republic since the beginning of 2001. I’ve been a chemical engineering research assistant, TEFL teacher and now mainly proof-read translations and scientific articles as well as forming a Czech-English translation team with my Czech wife.
I fell in love with this beautiful country during my first visit to it in 1997, and it was here that my artistic side was awoken, after learning to play with its language I finally appreciated my own native tongue and the possibilities it offered.
My journey into creative writing proper started with taking part in the role-playing section of a computer game support forum in 1999, where I learned about developing characters and their perspectives, managing multiple characters and how they interacted with each other and those outside their group, as well as what wider impact they could have on the greater fictional universe.
After my stories and contributions to other people’s stories proved popular, I accepted an invitation to a small writing forum, where I developed the ideas for my first novel and discovered to my great surprise that I had a talent for poetry.
This country, with its glorious natural beauty and the fascinating contrast between it’s many gorgeous and well-preserved medieval castles and architecture alongside modern buildings and technology, inspired the setting for NOBILITY AMONG US, which takes place in a land where not only the ancient monuments, sculptures and architecture left over from feudal times have survived intact to coexist with modern technology, but the political system and culture have somehow remained as well.
BEYOND THE MIST, first serialized in the Sci Phi Journal and now available as a standlone ebook and paperback, is inspired by my amateur interest in philosophy and rigorous thought, and was written partially as a response to a series of philosophical articles by John C. Wright, with many other tangential influences from various works, and out of my love of engineering, adventure and science fiction.
SELECTED VERSE – FAITH AND FAMILY is my first poetry collection, composed of poems that can be found at this blog arranged thematically. For instance, the first series of poems tells the story of how I met my wife and how our marriage has progressed over the years.
SELECTED VERSE – HEROES AND WONDERS is my second poetry collection composed of poems from this blog, and celebrates the courage, wisdom and beauty we see all around us, as well as the archetypal versions in our favourite epics.
I am one of the founding members of and a regular contributor to SuperversiveSF, home of the Superversive Literary Movement, and on the editing staff of Superversive Press.
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The Zwyckyverse 
Hi!
Hello there, are you enjoying the blog so far?
We had the pleasure of travelling from Budapest to Prague on the train; the Czech Republic has some of the most beautiful scenery the world has to offer. Which issue of Sci Phi has the NOBILITY AMONG US story? I’ve been meaning to buy an issue of the magazine and I figure I’d buy one with a story that sounds interesting.
I can’t argue with that, it’s one of the reasons this country is now my home.
Nobility Among Us is my first novel, which was published a year or two before Sci Phi was relaunched. If you follow the link in the menu at the top of this page, it will give you more information about it, as well as where it can be bought from (the kindle version costs the same as an ebook issue of Sci Phi, the paperback version costs more, since it has a lot more pages). I have edited the text above to turn each mention of one of my works into a link to the relevant page.
I grabbed myself a kindle copy from Amazon. Hopefully I’ll get a chance to dig into it soon!
Thank you so much. I hope you find it worthy of your investment.
James Sale’s review of Heroes and Wonders on Society of Classical Poets is both glowing and effective. Thank you for writing it; much needed “today” and also this particular day, here.
Thank you, it is one small part of my membership in the superversive literary movement, whose stated aims are to create literature that is both entertaining and serves the truth, which builds up civilization rather than tearing it down, offers hope in place of despair, meaning and value instead of nihilism, and encourages courage and virtue instead of laziness and vice. I am glad to see that I am meeting with some success in getting that message across.