Tony Hays brings a flavour of the Deep South to our meeting

Tony Hays our guest speaker on 30^th September was born the son of a share-cropper on a farm just outside Madison, Tennessee, an area he said steeped in history. Despite the fact that he has become a world traveller, having visited thirty countries, living and working in six of them, he still has his southern drawl but said that around the world he is more often taken for English or particularly Australian. He wrote his first short story at the age of eight and went on to obtain a degree in History and an MA in Educational Psychology at Tennessee Technological University and later another MA in English/Creative Writing at Texas A&M University.

Having had a couple of mystery books published with an historical background, he decided to concentrate on the Arthurian period as every other age seemed to be covered. He illustrated the luck that’s needed as a writer. His agent tried ten publishers who weren’t interested and he was prepared to give up trying to place his work when he decided to have one more attempt. That publisher had just come to the end of an Arthurian series by another author so was happy to accept him.

He has been living near, but not in Glastonbury, which he said is a weird place, as he has to visit the locality he is writing about. I bury myself in research, he told us, because he mixes legend and folk law in his stories. It’s all about detail but to attract readers he discovered it’s essential to have big names. The beauty of living in Somerset is that if he gets stuck with his writing he can go and sit up on the hill fort of South Cadbury and visualise the action. He also found that walking helped with his thinking. One thing he had discovered about sending unsolicited work, is that when publishers go through their ‘slush pile’, most books are tossed out after the first paragraph. A lesson perhaps for all budding novelists.

Unfortunately his books are not available in the UK but he hopes a deal will soon be finalised so this will happen. Our thanks to Tony for taking time out from his writing to come and talk to us.

For more information about Tony, visit his website at www.tonyhays.com.