Writing

I’m the founding publisher of Clouds of Magellan Press and Rainshadow Books. Clouds (est. 2006) has evolved into Rainshadow, to give me the facility to a) focus on my own writing, and b) carry out small publishing projects (including mentoring and working with other writers and publishers). Rainshadow is where I plan to self-publish my own work. That said, I have just completed reviewing the final proofs on my novel Kill Will: Night Bird in Sunlight, to be released mid-December 2025 from the lovely folk at Clan Destine Press.

More on Kill Will below …

Kill Will: Night Bird in Sunlight (Clan Destine Press, 2025)

‘If you love time travel, Shakespeare and brilliant fictional women, this book is absolute catnip…A fresh and lively tribute to the Bard but never too reverent. It’s clever, funny, intricate and gripping.’
~ Narrelle M Harris, author of The She-Wolf of Baker Street

‘An ingenious tale of time travel, a wild ride of witty and disruptive culture clash.’
~ Amanda Lohrey, author of The Labyrinth

View this post on Instagram

Buy from Clan Destine Press

Scheherazade and the Amber Necklace by Gordon Thompson (Clouds of Magellan, 2021)

‘While her younger sister was gifted in telling tales, Scheherazade couldn’t tell a story to save her life…’ Scheherazade and the Amber Necklace is a reimagining of the classic Tales of the Arabian Nights. When her sister is forced to marry the king, and her father imprisoned, Scheherazade must make a desperate journey to the Zagros Mountains to find a story that might save all their lives.

Buy from John Reed Books, Amazon, Readings Bookshop

I have also just finished a first draft of a new time-travel novel Now Fades the Glimmering Landscape, which explores artificial intelligence in the near future and takes characters back to the American Civil War. The title is taken from Thomas Gray’s Elegy, the same source for such great titles as Paths of Glory, and Far From The Madding Crowd. I want to have at least one Hardy-esque title in my list …

Art

I practice a kind of Merton-inspired art that focuses on the moment – mostly ink on paper, they are exercises in stillness. Thomas Merton combined postwar gestural abstract expressionism (he was a good friend of Ad Reinhart) with zen calligraphy (prompted by DT Suzuki – who also pointed him in the direction of Meister Eckhart). Some of the images (top left) are drawn in minutes; with some I use one dip of the brush in Japanese ink and follow it to the end. Accidents and impermanence are welcomed.