Michael Shawyer

I have always told stories, weaving every day happenings into something more dramatic. Being the second youngest child of six provided the perfect environment for a life of adventures and scrapes - a bit like Mark Twain’s ‘Tom Sawyer’.

“He’s spinning a yarn,” my father would say as he hid a grin behind the gentlest of rebukes. My Cornish mother was more direct and claimed I could talk the hind leg off a donkey. I thrived on attention and my siblings slipped under the radar, joyfully going about their teenage business.

If you corner me in conversation all these years later, don’t be surprised by a mixture of reality and fiction. Sometimes I am unable to separate the two. In 2018 I put 'pen to paper' and three years zipped by unnoticed. Leaving behind a stack of short and manuscript-length tales. A couple of screenplays also in the mix.

By November 2022 twenty five short stories featured in online magazines. The editors enjoying my depiction of human behaviour. I see things from several angles at once. sometimes a shopping trolley or a park bench is the protagonist. It was time for a book and a whole new world. . .

Marketing? Getting people interested? I’ve never had a difficulty with what to say but ‘how’ is more of a challenge. I’m told a blog is the way. Blog? Run that past me again. An internet search suggests a blog is an online journal first seen in 1994.

I imagine one of these ‘blogs’ in three-dimensions, like a loaf of uncooked bread. Round and doughy with a beating heart. It’s there on my desk, chameleon eyes rolling out of synch and I rush to the kitchen for a breadknife. . .

“I can do your blog.”

With five words my wonderful wife saved the blog from being posted as ‘Land of a Thousand Slices’ and I didn’t stop running until I was safe inside The Yellow Suitcase.