J.S. Dunn
Hi! My name is J.S. Dunn. I am a Glasgow-based writer of children’s fiction and very short stories/poetry. I loved English at school and grew up reading a range of mainstream (and some not so mainstream) authors. As a teenager, I loved Iain Banks, Irvine Welsh and Aldous Huxley. Over the years I have dabbled in all sorts from the crime procedurals of Val McDermid or Chris Brookmyre, to the historic pseudo-fiction of Hilary Mantel, to the gritty realism of Anne Enright and Harper Lee, I have yet to find a genre in which I have not been able to find joy. I have a particular fondness for the "exotic" narrator and, to this day, my top three books could well be Palace Walk (Naguib Mahfouz), The White Tiger (Aravind Adiga) and Half of a Yellow Sun (Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie). There is something about story-telling from an unfamiliar perspective that makes me want to learn more, something about unusual (for me) language and phraseology that has a way of grabbing my attention.
I have been writing stories all my life but never quite managed to make them click. Life, commitments and a crippling fear of being judged always seemed to get in the way of finishing a novel and putting myself out there. Everything I wrote flopped, leading me to abandon projects I thought to be derivative, uninteresting or trite. I would read it back and berate myself for being little more than a cut-price Iain Banks. A budget Brookmyre.
But, approaching my 40s, married with two sons in a Glasgow suburb, I promised myself I would achieve my life's ambition. Life is too short, I told myself - we only get one shot. So I set about looking for the inspiration. Something I might stick with. Then it hit me. My kids! Somehow, wrapped in hubbub of life and fatherhood, I had missed just how much I loved reading to my boys, and enjoyed the books they did. Ross McKenzie, Liz Pichon, Jeff Kinney, Ross Wellford, Michael Lawrence, J.K. Rowling - all amazing in their own particular way, and beloved by children the world over. Not to mention the "classics" that I grew up with - Roald Dahl, Enid Blyton, J. R. R. Tolkien. Fantastic! And it suddenly dawned on me that I had been looking in the wrong place. I didn't just need to want to write (I really did!). I didn't just need to want to be a writer (I really, REALLY did!). I needed a reason to write. Something, or someone, to do it for. And there they were. Two young lads, 11 and 7, wondrously engaged by reading and hearing stories. They were my motivation.
Of course, when I told them I was going to write a kids book and they were going to be my executive advisors, reading my writing with me, guiding the story, building the characters, they were absolutely delighted! So, I started the discipline of waking up early every morning, when the house was quiet and the day not yet begun, and untertaking to do an hour's writing before the hectic life of a working dad took hold. And it worked! Mostly. Each day, I would write around 200-300 words and, upon finishing each chapter, I would sit down and read them through with the boys. They would give me their perspectives and tell me where to go next. I took some of the inspirations from their hopes, their dreams and, indeed, my eldest sons' struggles with mental health. In fact, the "House With the Three Moons" comes straight out of a dream my eldest had one night - something he masterfully captured at the age of 12 on his drawing tablet.
The resulting novel is one of which we are all immensely proud. It is the first in a series of books featuring Tom and his friends versus the dreaded Sleepstalkers and the process has begun for the next instalment. So far, all that I can say is that the working title is "Sleepstalker: the Ghost Chamber" but more than that I cannot say - mainly as it is not written yet. I'll let you know what I can, when I can.
As well as novel writing, I have become a big fan of very short stories and poetry. I find that the discipline of writing something every day, no matter how short, how quickly imagined, keeps the brain active and creative. Using the prompts provided by #VSS365 (big shout out to those guys and the amazing bunch of creatives that follow them), I have been posting my work on X and Instagram for around three years. I've featured a selection of my posts on the website here.