Let me introduce myself Peter Lord Morgan
Perhaps you can spare the time to read about what I do for a living.
I would be very grateful if you would.
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I have been a semi-professional writer/playwright and author for almost thirty years; it is a dodgy game so at least until I retired from mainstream life it seemed a good idea to keep a steady ‘normal’ job at the same time.
(I was a supermarket manager, then latterly a leisure centre manager). I started earning money from writing – not a lot – in the late nineteen eighties when by chance I was invited to sit in on a meeting designed to promote an end of season festival in the holiday town I was living in at the time.
One of the more prominent members of this unofficial committee was an actor who worked in TV, George Rawlins: he and I had just completed production of a cassette tape ready for sale for Christmas; I had written the story, (Teddy Tutu), George did the narration (he specialised in voice overs for TV, mostly Channel Four at that time) and the production and incidental music was handled by a mutual friend.
Someone suggested that a street theatre play be written; designed specifically for performing outdoors, to move around the town carrying the audience with it, depicting tales of the various historic aspects of the town, and acted out in situ actually where that history had happened.
For reasons I never discovered, George suggested that I write it, and there being no other applicants I did just that, with suitable embellishments of course, and I have to confess I stretched the truth to breaking point sometimes, but all to get a laugh. I even got paid for it, so that made me a professional. It was a success, enough of a success to propel me into play writing for a couple more years;
I have four professionally performed stage plays to my name -
‘Tell Tales’, ‘Hanky Panky’, ‘A novel way to die’ and ‘Workers Playtime’.
This set me thinking, if I could write comedy for the stage and get the laughs, maybe I could do it for TV.
A big step but I couldn’t resist it.
Over the next couple of years I wrote a radio play Up Our Yard for Dame Thora Hird, and a pilot for a TV sit-com Grinding Halt for Sir David Jason; the ‘damehood’ and ‘sirhood’ were yet to come for both of them, but in my opinion both justly deserved.
Dame Thora is unfortunately no longer with us but I will never forget the evening I answered the telephone to hear a voice say Hello, Peter, "Thora Hird here, I have just read your radio play and I love it.”
The radio play was a success but unfortunately even though David Jason wanted to do the TV sit-com it never got past the commissioning editors.
I had a lot of fun writing satirical sketches and gags, many of them one-liners for ‘News Huddlines’ I even managed to get a few sketches on ‘The Russ Abbot Show’.
It seemed time to move on…..
How about a novel or two, why not, if others could do it, why not I?
What genre suited me best - I didn’t know, so I thought okay, let’s see what happens, if I think I have an idea let’s run with it.
The following is where it ran to, but if you are looking for an entry for the Nobel prize for literature, forget it, I write for two reasons, one, because I love to do it and two, because I sincerely hope my novels give pleasure; my work isn’t intellectually deep with a hidden moral dimension – it is purely for fun and enjoyment.
If you are still with me read on.
I have to make a small charge, but this is how I earn my living.
I only accept Paypal at the moment.
First of all I want to introduce you to a children’s series I have compiled for those of us who still believe in Santa Claus, and all that swaddling.
I have always had an interest in writing stories for children.
Josh and The Snow Dome
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I came up with the idea of a Christmas fantasy involving a little boy named Josh who passionately believes in Santa Claus and his slightly older sister, Hayley, who because she is twenty one months older is tragically in danger of losing her belief in Santa Claus and Christmasland; and let me tell you, when you stop believing in Santa Claus you suddenly become an adult, and that is quite a reality check.
In this series of six Christmas stories we meet not only Josh, Hayley and Santa Claus but also Santa’s trusty bodyguards Tinsel and Glitter with their flying quad bikes but also Santa’s two favourite Pixies Holly and Ivy.
Josh and Hayley meet the real live Santa Claus shortly after the great man has been evicted from Christmasland by a go-getting obnoxious little elf named Mister Bigwig. This odious little elf takes over Christmasland, cancels the delivery of Christmas presents, sends the reindeer into retirement at a donkey sanctuary
(well, there is a lack of reindeer sanctuaries don’t you find) and sets himself up as the new boss of Christmasland. Santa of course is distraught at this; he informs Josh and Hayley that he is homeless having run away from ‘Bide-a-Wee’ the Christmasland retirement home in Torquay, where Mister Bigwig had made him go to spend the rest of his days; so Josh invites Santa to live in what Josh always refers to as the ‘the pretty big shed’ which is at the bottom of Josh’s garden.
Santa presents Josh with a magic snow dome, a sort of hot line to Christmasland, a means by which Josh can keep in contact with Santa at all times. In the pretty big shed they plot the safe return of Santa to Christmasland and the downfall of Mister Bigwig – but it isn’t easy; Josh, Hayley and Santa have many adventures before they have won the battle and dispatched Mister Bigwig off in disgrace to live with his Auntie Muriel in Aberystwyth.
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Josh and the Snow Dome can be downloaded for £0.99p
This story has met with a lot of success, which is satisfying and it prompted me to write a follow-up story using exactly the same characters and what subsequently turned out to be the recurring theme of the fanatical Mister Bigwig obsessed with taking over Christmasland.
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‘Josh, the Snow Dome and Auntie Muriel’
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Once again it is just prior to Christmas and Mister Bigwig is up to his dirty doings once more, this time ably assisted by his Auntie Muriel from Aberystwyth.
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Josh the Snow Dome and Auntie Muriel can be downloaded for £0.99p
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I had little choice but to follow this up with a third story for the following Christmas –
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Josh and the Pixies in the Pink Plastic Teapot
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Then for the fourth Christmas I wrote -
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Josh and the Snow Domes of Doubt
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A fifth story, and yes, once again it is for Christmas, this is called –
Josh the Gremlins and a Space Rocket.
Josh and Hayley find themselves in Mister Bigwig’s fortress on the moon.
Josh the Gremlins and a Space Rocket can be downloaded for £0.99p
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As readers of the Josh and Hayley stories we are used to these adventures taking place just before Christmas time, usually because Obediah Bigwig, a nasty little elf, sometimes assisted by his Auntie Muriel, uses this time of year to inflict maximum damage at Christmasland and to try to get rid of Santa Claus. This adventure,
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Josh the snow dome and the mystery of Bide-a-Wee
takes place at Easter which is why Josh was surprised to
see the snow dome flashing on and off in the middle of Easter Sunday night. Santa Claus uses the snow dome like a hot lineto tell Josh that he and his sister Hayley are wanted urgently at Christmasland. This time the crisis isn’t at Christmasland, it is at Bide-a-Wee, the Christmasland retirement home in Torquay where the
retired elves and pixies go to live a long and happy retirement after devoting their working lives to Santa Claus and Christmasland.
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Josh and Hayley are ‘brought out of retirement’ by Santa Claus many years after their first adventures in Christmasland; once again Santa and Christmasland are in danger, but not this time from Mister Bigwig, this time it is an evil little elf called Professor Kringle.
Here We go Again can be downloaded for £0.99p
In the middle of writing these adventure stories for children I also wrote for adults, and in a couple of my novels it is rather adult-ish – never filthy, never any bad language, maybe at times a little risqué, but you could still read them to your granny – depending on your granny.
I am thinking specifically of
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‘LiveSexyCam.com’ is an on-line website owned and run by Anastasia, a retired webcam model, who no longer gets naked on camera ever since she met, fell in love with and now lives with Peter, who used to be a member himself.
As with all webcam sites of this nature it concentrates on giving sexual release to its members using the most beautiful models available.
Members buy the favours of the models, the more ‘tokens’ the member purchases and gives to the model the bigger the favour, whether it be getting topless, getting undressed completely - or in private chat – where no other member can see what is going on – the ultimate in internet sex.
We meet Olga, Anastasia’s newest recruit; Mia a veteran of six years as a camgirl and Nikita, Anastasia’s chief technician and photographer.
Followed by
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It is now nearly a year later and Olga has become one of the most popular girls on ‘LiveSexyCam, commanding never less that two hundred and more admirers every time she goes on line.
And yet, every time she looks in the mirror as her alter ego SashaBel prior to going to her room to log on she always smiles and remembers standing behind the glove counter in the department store where she used to work.
These two novels are very popular.
Lovers who never meet and Diary of a Camgirl can be downloaded for £0.99p each
I am Black Country born and bred, and like me anyone of that ilk will know that Anuck and Ayli (Enoch and Eli) are black country legends with a myriad of stories attached to their memory; so I thought for a bit of fun I would invent a couple – actually it is three more - new adventures for our local and well-loved heroes.
These are all in one volume I have collectively called
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One - ‘The strange affair of the secret groaty pudding recipe’
Two - ‘The strange affair of the great mushy peas battle’
And three - ‘The strange affair of the pork scratching drought’.
The Enoch and Ayli trilogy was born.
Earlier I mentioned I had written for Dame Thora Hird and Sir David Jason, so I had the idea of taking the radio and TV comedies and turning them into novels.
My original radio play was entitled
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Up Our Yard and I decided to keep that title.
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The story is set in a ‘yard’ of tiny back to back terraced houses somewhere deep in the industrial heartland of England just prior to the coronation of Queen Elizabeth in 1953. Those of us of a certain age will remember that in every yard (in this yard there were six tiny terraced houses with one outside toilet and wash house, the end house was a pub) there was an entirely unelected matriarch, never a patriarch, and Thora Hird played this part to perfection. Having taken the radio play and added a lot to it to make it into a novel I had a lot of ideas left over and so
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More from Up Our Yard was born.
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In both of these stories there was never a need for the women to fight for equality and ‘Me Too’; the yard matriarch was without doubt the undisputed reigning monarch and no-one ever argued.
Up Our Yard download for £0.99p
More from Up Our Yard also download for £0.99p
Having turned a radio play into a couple of novels my thoughts turned to Grinding Halt, and what could I do with that?
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‘Grinding Halt’ as I have already mentioned was a TV sit-com that never made TV; like other potential sit-coms at that time it was rejected by snotty nosed commissioning editors who decided that the great British viewing public didn’t want that sort of thing any more – what a pity they didn’t ask the great British public before they made their unilateral decision to deprive them of this particular form of entertainment.
And so it was time to develop this as a novel; I attacked with vim and vigour.
It’s basic premise is the accidental meeting between an elderly petty crook who has decided he is too old to go back inside because he is scared that he might die in a prison cell and he decides to go straight for the last years of his life; and a newly retired prison officer who coincidentally retires to live in the same seaside village as his old adversary.
Over the years they have crossed paths many times and fate has decreed that they will continue to do so.
Nobby (originally to be played by Sir David Jason) the old lag and main protagonist in the story has arrived in the village of Grinding Halt to live with his brother and sister-in-law and is totally devastated when he accidentally comes across his old enemy, Mister Pugh, who has bought the newly redundant railway station and cottage, where he intends to build a model railway in his declining years; both being rather lonely old men with no real friends a strange but close relationship gradually develops, even though through a habit built up over the years Nobby still calls the ex-prison warder Mister Pugh.
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Grinding Halt can be downloaded for £0.99p
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More from Grinding Halt does what is says on the tin.
We carry on exploring the relationship that is developing between the old lag and the prison officer bringing in new important characters as we progress the story; the estranged wife of Mister Pugh and Nobby’s rather promiscuous niece who falls for the prison officer even though he is old enough to be her father.
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More from Grinding Halt Download for £0.99p
Sitting in front of the telly one Sunday afternoon getting bored silly a thought hit me…. Hanky Panky!
No, not what you are thinking, I was not about to indulge in the great British habit of a bit of slap and tickle after a hearty Sunday lunch of beef, two veg and mashed spuds, followed by rhubarb and custard and a slice of fruit cake accompanied by a glass of Bank’s bitter; no, I began thinking of adapting the original stage play Hanky Panky into a novel, why not?
So I did, I changed the name to
A Fete worse than Death, a good old-fashioned quite fast-moving sexy romp; but all good clean fun.
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I think you might also enjoy
‘The Lost Nation of the Angeln’
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A few years ago I was vising a relative in the Black Country and I saw a man collecting scrap iron and throwing it onto the back of a cart pulled by a beautiful horse; I had previously thought that this way of life had gone but no, he was large as life.
In the Black Country years ago there was a mythical race of peoples called the Tipton Tatters and sitting in the front room of the house I was visiting I began to wonder exactly what was the origin of those men and boys who scour our backyards clean of unwanted scrap metal….
I invented a race of scrap dealers who for a thousand years had lived undiscovered deep in the caves under Dudley castle, only emerging into the daylight to do their job of collecting scrap.
Lost Nation of the Angeln can be downloaded for £0.99p
Perhaps you might like
Further up a duck’s armpit and
Even further up a duck’s armpit
A comedic trilogy of life in a midlands village in the middle ages highlighting the return of the lord of the manor Sir Enoch de Wulfrun and his squire Eli Morgan, who have spent five years crusading in the holy land as they try to pick up the pieces of their former life. Sir Enoch is desperate to marry his childhood sweetheart Lady Rebecca de Darlaston, whilst his squire Eli Morgan has big plans to use the key to the chastity belt he made for his fiancé Eliza five years ago; but unknown to him she soon learned how to unlock the belt and has, shall we say, for five years been putting it about a bit.
In these stories we also meet Mad Peggy Clackett and her daughter Daft Alice Clackett, the two witches of this parish.
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Up a duck’s Armpit download for £0.99p
Further up a Duck’s armpit also £0.99p
Even further up a duck’s armpit £0.99p
I would like to introduce you to the latest of my characters that you have yet to meet, Olga and Peter, who get embroiled in murder mysteries; these I wrote with the help of my best friend Sofia Angel.
Love has no age is when they first meet, and against all the odds they fall in love; Olga is young enough to be Peter’s daughter but this doesn’t bother either of them.
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Love has no age download for £0.99p
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Love is sharing the same coffee cup is the second of the trilogy and once again they get mixed up with murder and the illicit supply of drugs at the university where Peter is a lecturer.
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Love is sharing the same coffee cup download for £0.99p
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Love is for life not just for Christmas
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Once again Olga and Peter have a murder to solve, as well as moving to live in the tiny village that is Olga’s home where they get married and take over the tenancy of the village pub and a small sheep farm.
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Love is for life is also download for £0.99p
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‘Love has no age’ and ‘Love is sharing the same coffee cup’ are both stand-alone murder mysteries: ‘Love is for life not just for Christmas’ adds a new twist; this story brings together what up until now we have believed to be two unrelated stories and we discover that in fact the first two are actually both part of the same story.
Maybe you will have to read them to understand what I mean.
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Titus is a down at heel totally skint randy nobleman with a bad stammer who takes to the road as a highwayman - disastrously, I might add.
I mean, who is going to take seriously a highwayman who holds up your stage coach and shouts -
‘S-s-s-stand and d-d-d-deliver, your
m-m-m-money or your l-l-l-life!’
He teams up with Penny, his uncle’s bit of stuff who becomes a female highwaywoman: Lady Penny de Redful also becomes his secret lover as well as business partner, she brings in her friend Jenny; Lady Penny uses the name ‘Pink Witch of the woods’ and Jenny is ‘Booby of the woods’, Jenny specialises in robbing stage coaches whilst topless and between them they all have several hilarious adventures.
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Titus A.DuqSars download for £0.99p
I can offer you a very cynical personal view of life here in the UK in a future time not too far away – let’s say timeline 2040, although there are those who say that 2040 is already here - when law and order is practically non-existent and it is anarchy out on the streets.
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Ordinary decent law abiding citizens are sandwiched between the low-life thugs and the drugged-up zombies who terrorise everyday life, and worse, the totally dismissive attitude of those who are supposed to be their protectors. Finally, the victims, who are fed up with being thrown to the lions on a daily basis declare ‘Okay, enough is enough’. Ignoring the threats from the ‘ruling classes’ they say, ‘sod this, if they won’t protect our kids and our old folk we will do it ourselves.’ Unrestricted by the edicts of the politically correct brigade, retribution can be administered swiftly and very painfully.
Has it really come to this? Download for £0.99p
My latest offering, which I have only recently finished, is where we meet the creator of the Olga and Peter adventures. He lives alone and has rather enjoyed that way of life. He is reading through a diary he used to keep; we find excerpts and notes about his latest Olga and Peter story; we also meet his lady friend in Columbia who he has met on Skype. To complicate matters a young lady, Jenny, who lives opposite to him has decided that she wants him and they spend every Sunday afternoon together.
After a life living alone not knowing anyone this takes a bit of getting used to, hence him saying it has been a funny old year.
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It has been a funny old year Download £0.99p
Finally – for now – for those like me who are intrigued by the past I have an offering that part time took me five years to complete.
It is the hidden story of the little unimportant black country town where I was born and raised in Staffordshire.
I have always been intrigued by some of the street names and the back alleys; these back alleys, why are they there, what was their purpose?
The deeper I delved the more intrigued I became and eventually a fascinating untold history emerged. I discovered much to my surprise that my home town is a long forgotten spa town complete with hot springs and all the facilities.
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The Healing Springs of Willenhall Spa download for £0.99p
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For the moment my friends, that is it,
I have two more ‘projects’ in hand and I hope in due course to add them to my library.
Please take the time to read at least one of my novels; after all that is why I wrote them, to give pleasure and satisfaction.
I don’t mind which one you pick, but genuinely, I sincerely hope you enjoy it – then maybe you might read another?
Thank you so much,
Peter Lord Morgan