Gary R Batchelor

I began writing my first novel while working at UCL in 1997. On completion of the first draft, Divine of the Gods was 120,000 words long. I sent my story and other writing ideas to thirty literary agents over a three year period, without success.

In 1998 we moved to Cornwall. I subsequently completed an English with Media degree at University College, Falmouth in 2005 and a PGCE at Truro College two years later.

I then taught for Cornwall Adult Education for a decade, until 2015.

I re-drafted Divine and this increased the word count to over 147,000 and I hope to finish this and publish it within a couple of years.

By 2015 I had also completed an MA(Literature and Film) and had undertaken a couple of Creative Writing courses with the Open University. These courses gave me the confidence to begin to write short stories. However the online ezines that I sent my stories to for publication had a very narrow genre criteria and none were accepted. Undaunted I decided to publish my stories on Amazon KDP and began to put together a collection of seven stories under the title A Trick of the Tale. The first collection of these was released on June 18th 2017, as single stories or the complete volume; as an e book or paperback.

A Body Parts & Other Anatomies, another collection of horror short stories based on body idioms was published on 30th October 2017 to coincide with Halloween.

Finally in my initial self publishing phase came a horror novella, Syngamy in April 2018.

In late 2018 I decided to send a submission package to literary agents featuring my crime series, Cold Fire. The first story is titled Twinkle Twinkle and is set in the year 2000 and charts the life and times of DCI Adam Furness, a detective in the Cornwall Major Investigations teams.

I began sending the package out from April 2020. I have subsequently completed the first draft of two further novels in the Cold Fire series; Anteros and The Rock of Sisyphus.

I am currently writing the first story in another planned detective series based in Cornwall, In Auxilium Omnium, which is the motto of the Cornwall and Devon police and means To the assistance of everybody. The protagonist is DI Theia Vane and the first story is called Charon's Obol.

I have also begun writing a stand alone novel, with a working title of Until Death Us Do Part, which has come together from three related short stories. I have two other short story series which may also be adapted for novelization.

My plan is to resume self publishing on a more professional basis, while also sending submissions to literary agents.