Here's that writers' manual you were reaching and scrambling for. You know the one: filled with juicy writing tidbits and dripping with pop cultural snark and smartassery. Ew. Not an attractive look. But effective. And by the end, you'll either want to kiss me or kill me. With extreme prejudice. Go on. You know you want to.
Welcome to the online habitat of writer David Antrobus.
“Creedless shells of men tottering down the causeways like migrants in a feverland." - Cormac McCarthy, The Road
As you can see, he appears as a personable if slightly reserved example of the species authorus solitarus. He responds best to untempered praise and glowing reviews (as well as unsolicited cash offers), but will not necessarily shy away from a confidently expressed caveat or modifier if delivered with appealing sincerity. He is also adaptable, finding himself equally at home within the ecosystems of nonfiction and fiction, although his preference for either tends toward the darker margins.
David is a perfect example of a flexible migratory species, having been conceived and born in the drizzly middens of Manchester, England, raised in the (cough) bucolic English midlands an arrow's flight from Robin Hood country, until finally dragging himself as far west as the dripping fecundity of Western Canada's coastal rainforests.
While writing is his agony/joy, David's experience as both an immigrant and a former youth worker inform much of his work. Restlessness, beauty, humour, abject horror, lyricism, eros, bewilderment, kittens, outrage, song, mourning, astonishment, wordplay, mockery, benevolence, redemption, bleakness, wine, love, muffled voices in adjoining rooms, endless smoky roads and a singularly odd infatuation with the music of the 1980s conspire to add yet further layers, albeit dubious ones.
David hopes you will stick around and ask him uncomfortable probing questions on his blog. He also hopes you will read and even like his work ... but he won't ever hold it against you if you don't. He promises. Kind of.