{"id":15,"date":"2022-03-28T22:37:46","date_gmt":"2022-03-28T22:37:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.alanjonesbooks.co.uk\/?page_id=15"},"modified":"2022-04-20T20:04:22","modified_gmt":"2022-04-20T20:04:22","slug":"about","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/blog.alanjonesbooks.co.uk\/index.php\/about\/","title":{"rendered":"About"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

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Alan Jones isn’t my real name; I write under a pen name. It\u2019s for a reason that no longer has any significance, but I decided to stick with it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I retired a year or so ago as a veterinary surgeon in a practice I started up over thirty years ago in Girvan, a small Scottish seaside town on the Clyde Coast. Around half my time was spent working on farms, the other half with people\u2019s pets. When I started writing, the stories that came into my head were gritty and violent, inspired by some of the characters I\u2019d come across in my childhood, in and around Glasgow, using the language, the blackness, and the humour of the city I\u2019d grown up in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although I knew my patients wouldn\u2019t care, I didn\u2019t think this would sit well with my clients , that my imaginings weren\u2019t quite fitting with the professional, caring image they looked for in a vet. I was especially worried about the fairer sex among my clients, especially those of a more mature age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was an error of judgement, I\u2019ll admit. I\u2019d done little market research, and it wasn\u2019t until I started attending crime book festivals I discovered that a high percentage of gritty crime readers are women, many of them in the over-50 age bracket like myself, and it was more often than not a male reader who complained about gratuitous sex, violence, or bad language in my books. As far as some of my female readers were concerned, it seemed the grittier the writing, the better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now, because I\u2019m retired and, for the last five years, the genre I write in has been WW2 \\ Holocaust historical fiction, I could have chosen to use my real name (which shouldn\u2019t be too hard to find), but I felt that I\u2019d built up a loyal following of readers under my pen name, some of whom might be willing to give a different genre a try because they like the way I write. This turned out to be a reasonable assumption, with some of the Sturmtaucher Trilogy\u2019s most enthusiastic supporters being previously dyed-in-the-wool crime fiction addicts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I started writing over ten years ago, and published my first three books in 2013, 2014 and 2016 and although, Bloq<\/em>, the last book, did very well, it wasn\u2019t enough for me to sack the day job.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My life as a rural vet allowed me to live and work in a beautiful part of the world. When I look out my front window, Ailsa Craig, Ireland, Arran and the Mull of Kintyre are the backdrop to the view I have, and I within a hundred yards of my front door I can be strolling along a two-mile sandy beach. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A ten minute walk in the opposite direction has me in the hills surrounding the town, and the harbour, where I keep my rather elderly boat, is five minutes away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Girvan Lifeboat<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

It’s also a two minute run to the harbour \u2013 The local RNLI lifeboat station is there and, for the last couple of years, I\u2019ve been one of the coxswains. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

When the pagers go off, I don\u2019t have far to go. I\u2019ll be doing a blog post about the RNLI and me in the near future, so watch this space.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Away from writing, I love reading, although I\u2019ve hardly touched fiction since starting to write the Sturmtaucher Trilogy, as I was so immersed in researching, writing and editing, though I did read a pile of non-fiction connected with WW2 and the Holocaust. I also sail, and I love cooking, and a good film. I\u2019ve not had much time for television, so have missed some really good stuff, which I\u2019ll have to try to catch up on. I still play football, although I should probably know better at my age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I also make furniture but, again, this has suffered while I was researching and writing the trilogy. In addition, I lost my workshop space when I retired \u2013 it was  located in an outbuilding attached to the Surgery I built in 1990 when I set up the practice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The Barn<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Only in November did I get the keys for my new workshop, an old stone barn on a nearby farm, and I\u2019ve spent the last few months renovating it, flooring the loft, putting in electrics, and installing all my benches, tools and machinery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It took me three days to move all the reclaimed wood and old furniture I\u2019d gathered over the years, now better organised and stacked to allow me better to restore it, and build new furniture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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My Bench<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ll be doing a blog post soon about my progress, but here are some of the pieces I\u2019ve made over the years \u2013 most of our furniture is hand-made, upcycled or restored.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Bedside Cabinet in spalted beech<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n
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Bar stool in whisky barrel oak and steel<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Alan Jones isn’t my real name; I write under a pen name. It\u2019s for a reason that no longer has any significance, but I decided to stick with it. I retired a year or so ago as a veterinary surgeon in a practice I started up over thirty years ago in Girvan, a small Scottish […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":[],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.alanjonesbooks.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/15"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.alanjonesbooks.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.alanjonesbooks.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.alanjonesbooks.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.alanjonesbooks.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/blog.alanjonesbooks.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/15\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":188,"href":"https:\/\/blog.alanjonesbooks.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/15\/revisions\/188"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.alanjonesbooks.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}