What Does An Author Get Up To When Not Authoring?

Hello friends and fans!

As you may be aware, writers are people too – so what do we do when we’re not writing stories? I can’t speak for the others in that regard, but I can tell you a little about what I get up to during my average holiday, weekend, evening or off-times!

I have a variety of hobbies, and I try to spend at least a little time on them in my free time during the week! What are some of my hobbies? Let’s see if I can list them for you!

• Writing (naturally!!!)
• Painting
• Model building
• Photography
• Illustrations
• DIY projects & home improvement
• Paranormal Investigation
• Academia

I probably bore you enough talking about my writing all the time, so let me tell you a little about my other hobbies for a change!

Painting

I enjoy painting in acrylic on canvas. I’ve created a few paintings that I’m very proud of, and I always infuse depth and emotional meanings into my work – have a look and see if you can work them out!

Model Building

I love to build models, always have. I spent many happy hours as a child building and playing with model aeroplanes, ships and cars – and pretending they were space ships! LOL Anyway, I still love to build models – even though I don’t actually play with them anymore *wink*.

Recently I also started making models of the starships and craft that feature in my scifi writing – as you can see in the slideshow, I included some of these in title images for a series of articles I wrote called “The Tech Side”, which shows the models photographed and superimposed over space backgrounds!

The big problem I had with models was where to keep them safe and display them… which is probably why I have none of my original models left! Recently I began setting up small display areas around the house to display my models in, so I’ll probably be spending more time modelling in the near future.

Photography

Photography’s always been a passion of mine, although I don’t really get out much to take photos anymore!

Illustrations

I’ve loved drawing all my life too – and for the last six or seven years I’ve been drawing my own illustrations for my books. These aren’t included in the actual books, but used on my website to give readers an idea of what’s going on in the stories they’re related to!

DIY projects & home improvement

As I’ve mentioned before, I also spend a lot of time on this hobby! I’ve always enjoyed working with my hands, creating and building things, overcoming challenges and coming up with innovative solutions to ordinary everyday problems!

To see more about that, you’ll have to visit the Innovation DIY website!

Paranormal Investigation

Kay and I both come from a Neo-Pagan background and have a huge interest in the paranormal. We love to watch good paranormal investigation shows. As such, we set up and operate a website called Our Ghost Encounters to journal our paranormal experiences. We haven’t updated it in a little while, but there are a few nice articles and photos on there if you’re interested in that sort of thing and want to take a look around!

Academia

Yes, this is very different to fiction writing – and even to regular non-fiction writing! So far, I’ve written four academic papers. My favorite subjects are related to archeology, anthropology and in particular, subcultures, identities and New Religious Movements. I’ve always been a human rights advocate at heart, and have always worked to defend the underdog and to set records straight – even if I’m not! 😉 While I can’t really say it’s “fun” to write a 15k word paper, it really feels like an accomplishment and that is it’s own reward. You can view my current articles here for free!

That’s all for now!

As always, feel free to email or message me via Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn if you have any comments or questions! Send hatemail to the same address, if it’s not too much trouble! 😉