Shona Clingham has wanted to be a writer since the moment she discovered the magic of stringing words together. Word is: she popped out at birth armed with a book and a pen. She writes to figure out Stuff, which makes writer’s block a difficult and most confusing time.
She hails from the island of St Helena; for anyone who doesn’t know, try Google maps — yes, that’s it: the little dust-speck of a gem in the middle of the South Atlantic. As much as she loved baking herself to a crisp in the sunshine, she has spent more than half her life in the UK. She currently lives in Somerset with her partner and daughter.
She is the author of Blood’s Veil and the fantasy series, Immisceo.
That’s the official (ish) bio, as official as I can muster. scroll down for more…
or
Read the first three chapters of book one Immisceo Taken for free HERE (No signup.)
Referring to myself in third person makes me feel like a pompous twat, which I don’t think I am, but don’t take my word on that if you don’t want to—to each their own… distorted perspectives and all. With the (mostly) standard, expected version of a bio out of the way, here’s a messier offering of an update:
I am admittedly a defensive introvert… if you’ve read anything I’ve written that much might be obvious, but in my defence (ha!), I’m quite hilarious, delightfully so and otherwise. I’m a bookworm (or at least, I was prior to the Implosion of Life As I Knew It of 2019/20) and a gamer (PS4, mostly), artist (I suppose, although I’m deeply uncomfortable calling myself one), and a self-proclaimed weirdo (it’s easier if I adopt the term myself and embrace the hell out of it. It saves the bullies some time (aren’t I generous?) and honestly, the word weirdo could always do with more definition; too many have misused the label that it muddies the water to cover the real perversion of society. No mud here with me except for the mud people have slung… let’s clear it up a little at a time, and let’s hope that people will understand that there is no avoiding the mess, not for ourselves—not for any individual. Acknowledging this gives me strength to keep living. It gives me self-worth. Defining the self gives self-worth. I highly recommend it.
Writing helps with definition.
For the record, I’ve written a standalone novel, and one book in my planned fantasy series; the second book of that series has been on hold since 2017, unless 600 words every 10 months or so counts as progress… but I’m reconnecting with that project. Some things are meant to be placed on hold, and there is no rushing that.
I’m currently working on a longer, (more) personal project (alongside tackling motherhood, chronic illness, and recent realisation of neurodivergent aspects which sums up, explains, dismantled then reassembled like shoddy flat pack furniture at least 80% of my life) and what began as an exploration of the self (and mostly still is—surprise, surprise) evolved into answers to long-standing questions about the culture I grew up in and my place (whatever seemingly dark frickin’ corner that is) in it. I’ve also started an art project so overwhelming to me it feels like I’m leaking pieces of myself onto the page like tiny brain babies and I’m scrambling to get and keep them all in one space… maybe that’s just something of a metaphor for how rapidly I fell apart over the last few years and somehow, I’m finding comfort in both these familiar and new formats to express as much as I can without fireworking my tentatively restructured life, but that’s difficult because life is messy, building is messy, and writing or drawing a first draft about it is messy.
To mark the occasion, I used AI to afix a hard hat atop my head (might have been a good idea to switch that book/pen combo for one of those). It’s a better likeness of current me than this actual (filtered but mostly low-lighted) pre-breakdown selfie. Enjoy.
PPE, baby! Reconstruction underway.
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Or, for crying out loud, read the first three chapters of my book, Immisceo Taken.
You can check out more about the series here. I drew a map and everything. Seriously.