CHRIS POPE

Lloyd here again. This is the section where you can find out more about the wimp guy's books. His first effort is the one I appear in so you'd better read that or else we'll be having serious words. Even worse you could find yourself having a scary one-on-one with a lady named Dark Miriam from the same book, which is not something you'd want. But right now I'm gonna hand over to Chris so he can tell you about his writing, his completed books, and how they came about. He does his best, even if it ain't much, so bear with him.

 

Hello there, I'm Chris Pope, and despite what Lloyd might like you to think, this is MY website. Like a lot of would-be writers I've spent years scribbling notes and story ideas on bits of paper. My first love as a genre was science fiction, having grown up reading the works of Herbert, Wyndham and Clarke. In fact I can state without hesitation that the following novels made the greatest impression and are stories that I have returned to and read again and again. They are:

 

'The Outward Urge' and 'The Kraken Wakes' by John Wyndham.

'The Dragon in the Sea' and 'Dune' by Frank Herbert.

'A Fall of Moondust' and 'Earthlight' by Arthur C. Clarke.

'The Green Odyssey' by Philip Jose Farmer.

'The Olympus Gambit' by William Rollo.

 

My own initial sci-fi project, a story now called 'Last Run', has gone through countless developments, re-writes and complete re-thinks and is still pending after some 30 years! I don't recall exactly when or why, maybe in frustration at my lack of progress with 'Last Run', but I decided to try my hand at a vampire story. However I was firmly of the intention to write something other than what seemed to be the standard depiction of either blood-sucking villains or else anguished immortal heart throbs looking for redemption. I also wanted to explore a divergent avenue on the eternal theme of Good versus Evil. and the final result of all this rumination was my first published novel 'A Different Kind of Girlfriend'.

Having sampled the 'vampire waters' so to speak, I was eager to write a second novel. I'd left the ending of ADKOG open for a sequel but instead went for a fresh 'take' (for me at least) on the genre. 'To Cure All Ills' was the result, a story in which the fundamental nature of the vampires involved changed from the mystical, as in ADKOG, into something very much more 'human'. In fact, apart from having a long life span, a miraculous ability to cure injury and illness, and of course a thirst for blood, they were subject to all the chief human failings, namely a desire to acquire money and power. 

With two vampire novels under my belt and published, I decided the time was overdue to return to my first love, science fiction. After struggling for months on more plot problems with my long-standing project 'Last Run', I decided to move on to a new idea sparked by my interest in the military exploits of Lawrence of Arabia in World War One and those of the British Long Range Desert Group and the SAS in the Western Desert during World War Two. I was also influenced by the magnificent but flawed film version of 'Dune'. This resulted in my novel 'Beyond the Line', which of all my stories so far I had the most fun writing. Who couldn't enjoy drawing a picture of camel-mounted alien nomad warriors waving scimitars as they charge across desert sands to attack high-tech human mercenaries armed with laser weapons?

But after that my mind swung back to vampires again, and to yet another varied take on the stereotype. I also wanted to try my hand at including a hint of eroticism, which seems to be a staple of some many other vampire stories. The result was Empowerment, in which a New York prostitute is faced with the ultimate temptation. My wife read the draft and gave me some very funny looks but I went ahead and published it anyway, so take a look and be a judge.

And what next? Last Run is close to lift-off at long last, and about time. Watch this space as the saying goes.

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