There seems to be a lot of ‘pressure’ for an author, especially a self publishing author, to have a blog. So I might as well. But what with Facebook, Twitter etc etc I have no idea how often I’ll be able to update this.
After a very difficult period of my life in which I was forced to confront my gay sexuality after a lifetime of suppression and denial and I feared I might go to prison, my counsellor suggested a I write as a form of therapy. So it started. It wasn’t meant to be a book at first, indeed I started in the first person, but that turned out to be very restrictive for my purposes, as I felt unable to say things that need to be said – too close to the bone, perhaps. Also I was unable to take the view of other characters, to write how they viewed the protagonist, Simon.
Parts were very hard to write, bringing many memories, both happy ones but also reviving a huge sense of loss, and some one would rather forget, errors and misjudgements which caused pain to others but which are key to Simon’s story. As it says in the foreword, "Let us have the honesty to see things as they are, since to see things as they ought to be is to miss them entirely."

The first part was ready a couple of years ago and published as the first book of a trilogy because I could already see it was going to be that long. It was well received but there was negative comment about the title, “The Secret Catamite: 1 The Book of Daniel” and the cover image which is a detail from the Warren Cup, a silver Roman vessel now in the British Museum in London, England, which shows homosexual sex acts.
Readers will find how Simon starts to identify with Hamlet, so a line was chosen from that play for the new title, “The Clouds Still Hang” and the complete trilogy, including “The Book of Daniel” is now published under that title.

A new cover was designed which was not explicit and so people could perhaps leave the book lying around or read in public without attracting attention. The cover is described, “A man stands by the side of a road. Is it the road to his future or is he looking back at his past? He is looking at the rainbow, a symbol of his innate optimism – or is he looking at the clouds, symbols of the troubles that have hung over him all his life?”
The book was touted round literary agents but all rejected it – too explicit, delicate subject matter etc etc. So I decided to publish it myself – and here we are.
The Clouds Still Hang