Frost Magazine is thrilled to learn more about Oliver Eade, the winner of WforW Georgina Hawtrey-Woore Award for Independent Authors: Fiction for Young Adults Category, with his fabulous novel, The Kelpie’s Eyes. Let’s take a look into his world to see how he weaves his magic.
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After waking up, often around six am, I can no longer remain in bed. With fading dreams confined to hidden folds in my brain, I’ll be hitting my computer, attacking it with whatever crazy notion appears in my head. Something, I hope that could be turned into a story that others might wish to read.
For me, mornings are best. With my wife still asleep, and the birds doing their morning thing in the garden, it feels as if there’s just me and an empty screen waiting to be filled. Curiously, I cannot write in the evening. In fact, after nine pm I’m not up to much at all. But I am at my most critical, so if there’s nothing to watch on the telly, it’s a good time to proofread… Did I write that? But it’s dreadful!
Although once an avid reader, I have less time, as a writer, to read the writings of others. Late evenings, just before falling asleep, are put side for reading: mostly fiction, but I do try to keep up-to-date with the New Scientist and Amateur Photographer, my other passion being photography.
Feet up on the sofa, living in the past? You’ve gotta be joking! Retirement is, in some ways, as busy as was my, on average, sixty-seven-and-a-half-hour week as a consultant physician. Just keeping the pair of us (wife and me) afloat takes up a lot of time. Bills, house repairs, family matters… how on earth do these things occupy so much space on the daily timetable?
But, depending on the weather and the time of year, one thing has always meant a lot to me: our garden. It’s almost as if a garden becomes an extension of oneself. With advancing age, ‘self’ becomes unavoidably less attractive whilst the garden retains a certain beauty. Nature, albeit tamed? So, for those moments of ‘spare’ time, after the early hours of dawn, garden and writing have to fight it out for my attention.
And the rest? Just being with my wife, I guess. We’ve been together for fifty-five years and, to be honest, nothing else really matters. Apart from our immediate family in Texas and Switzerland. So, going to concerts together (we met all those years back playing piano duets as students), the opera, theatre, cinema and just being with our lovely granddaughters add meaning to my life. Thankfully, we mostly like and enjoy the same things.
And I love her cooking!
A prolific award winning author, Oliver Eade’s books can be obtained on:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Kelpies-Eyes-Oliver-EADE-ebook/dp/B00KK2COCU/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1528376472&sr=8-1&keywords=Oliver+eade+The+Kelpies+eyes
www.olivereade.co.uk
p.s. Oliver will be launching The Parth Path – set in a post-apocalyptic world – on 14th July 2-4 at Old Gala House, Scott Street, Galashiels (with donations welcomed to Words for the Wounded)
Author Iona Carroll will be there also to launch Homecoming, a moving novel about the struggles facing a wounded soldier on his return to his family.
Iona Carroll’s novels can be obtained on Amazon.co.uk
Images used with the permission of Oliver Eade